


Where a Garden Was

by Eighty_Sixed



Series: Lonely Planet [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Aziraphale and Crowley Through The Ages (Good Omens), Bible, Blasphemy, Gen, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Language, Minor Violence, Serious Injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-16 05:42:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 38,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28826166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eighty_Sixed/pseuds/Eighty_Sixed
Summary: Crowley travels back through time (sort of, it's an ethereal thing) to relive some of the less fun moments of history with Aziraphale. Those moments feature attempted human sacrifice, plagues, martyrs, crusaders, more plagues, more martyrs, conquistadors, fires of various kinds, some unpleasant odors, and regrettably few opportunities to grab a drink. Meanwhile, Newt and Anathema rob a cathedral, and Adam tries to get Dog to play fetch.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Lonely Planet [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2113563
Comments: 33
Kudos: 22





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to my fic Lonely Planet.
> 
> Title is from the Bright Eyes song "Poison Oak."

There’s a well-known saying that it’s not really paranoia if they really are out to get you. Like all demons, Crowley had a finely attuned and well-justified sense of paranoia, honed by long experience of interacting with other demons, who would not only stab you in the back given half a chance, but would also stab you in the front and side while they were at it. It was that sense of paranoia, for example, that had led him to guilt-trip Aziraphale into securing a supply of holy water for him decades ago, a paranoia that had paid off during the Almost-Apocalypse when Crowley had used the holy water to take out a Duke of Hell. It was that same sense of paranoia, egged on by one of Agnes Nutter’s prophecies, that had led him and Aziraphale to preemptively switch faces in the aftermath of the Almost-Apocalypse to avoid being destroyed by holy water and hellfire, respectively. And it was that paranoia that had led him, five years later, to convince Aziraphale to go with him on an epic quest to find God and beg for Her protection once the jig was up and Above and Below had come after them again. So Crowley’s paranoia had served him well, as evidenced by the fact that he and Aziraphale were still alive despite all the malevolent forces that really were out to get them.

In the weeks after their return from the road trip to the scenic Armenian Highlands, Crowley’s paranoia had been in full bloom. Their quest had been a success in that they were indeed now under God’s somewhat ambiguously defined protection, but Crowley wasn’t taking any chances. He and Aziraphale had immediately fortified the bookshop and Crowley’s flat to prevent surprise incursions by occult and/or ethereal forces. Crowley had, to all intents and purposes, moved into the bookshop. It wasn’t official or anything. He still kept his flat, mainly because there wasn’t enough room or light for his plants at the bookshop, and also because he feared that Aziraphale would be nice to the plants and undo all of Crowley’s hard work. But in those first few weeks, every time Crowley considered saying a casual _Goodbye, see you later_ to Aziraphale and heading out the door, he couldn’t bring himself to do it, in case Above or Below came after one or both of them while they were apart. In case it really was goodbye. So Crowley stayed with Aziraphale in the bookshop, making rude comments about the Apostles as he leafed through the angel’s collection of rare Biblical manuscripts and working the front desk so he could amuse himself by playing mind games with any potential customers* and spending long evenings eating takeaway and drinking wine with Aziraphale until one or both of them fell asleep on the back room’s antique sofa that was more comfortable than it had any right to be.

As the weeks went by and Above and Below failed to materialize, Aziraphale and Crowley started making excursions to the Ritz and St. James Park. They never went out unarmed. More weeks went by uneventfully, and they started to wonder if they really were safe. Given that they had both been disincorporated yet had failed to return to Heaven or Hell, Above and Below had to have realized that they had friends, or at least ambivalent and reluctant allies, in high places. God may have even kept Her Word and sent round a memo announcing that Aziraphale and Crowley were working for Her now. What they were supposed to be doing in their new role as God’s lackeys was a bit unclear to Aziraphale and Crowley, as the Almighty’s management style was decidedly hands-off, but they were more than willing to use their newfound status, such as it was, to keep Heaven and Hell off their backs. 

As months went by without incident, Crowley started going out on errands on his own while Aziraphale was busy reading at the bookshop. He would stop by his flat to water and shout at the plants, or take the Bentley for a spin. Now that nothing catastrophic had happened, he supposed that he could move back into his flat. But he was disinclined to. It wasn’t so much the separation anxiety anymore as the simple, embarrassing fact that he liked being at the bookshop with Aziraphale. He liked it more than being alone in his sleek and sophisticated and empty flat. The musty, cluttered shop, smelling of old books and incense, had become home. That was something he’d never had before. He’d had places he lived, or pretended to live, which were always a reflection of the person he pretended to be. The bookshop was home to the person he really was.

Now, over a year since the road trip to Eden, the paranoia was still there. But whereas the paranoia had been a snarling guard dog with saliva dripping from its curled lip, now it was a guard dog that was napping lightly with one ear cocked and a leg twitching from the chasing of dream-rabbits. Crowley was out and about, driving the Bentley through the crowded London streets. He had already been to his flat to express how disappointed he was in his African violets, and now he was on his way to a bakery that sold little cakes that Aziraphale particularly liked. He never failed to bring back something for the angel while on his solo excursions.

Crowley’s phone rang while he was stuck behind a delivery van, and he glanced at the screen. It was Aziraphale, calling from the bookshop. Sometimes he called while Crowley was out with special requests of what to bring back. Crowley answered the phone by saying, “Do you want the chocolate or raspberry cakes? I was going to get some of both—”

“Never mind the cakes.” Aziraphale’s voice was deadly serious, to say nothing of his uncharacteristic disregard for sweets, and Crowley froze in the act of maneuvering the Bentley around the stopped delivery van. “You’re not going to like what I have to say,” Aziraphale went on, speaking low and rapidly, “but I need you to listen to me anyway. The proximity sensor went off.”

Crowley sucked in his breath. He and Aziraphale had consulted some spell books and erected a network of sensors that alerted them when any angel or demon other than the two of them entered within a five-block radius. His heart pounding, Crowley dove the Bentley into the opposite lane, narrowly missing an approaching car, to get around the van that was blocking his lane.

“It might be another false alarm**,” Aziraphale said. “But in case it’s not, don’t come home until I call you back and give you the all-clear.”

“That’s the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard,” Crowley said, his worry transmuting into anger. “If it’s not a false alarm, you can’t handle it by yourself—”

“Believe it or not, I can. I have things well in hand here, but you’ll ruin it if you come crashing in.” Aziraphale sounded calm, which just made Crowley panic even more. Aziraphale tended to lose it over small things but got cool in the face of extreme danger.

“Too bloody bad, I’m crashing in anyway,” Crowley said. There was too much traffic in his lane, so he weaved back and forth, using the opposing lane, the sidewalk, and a small city park as his own personal roadway, veering into wherever he saw an opening, or creating one through sheer force of will wherever there wasn’t one. Blaring horns preceded and followed his every move. “I’ll be there in three minutes, two if these _morons_ will stop just staring slack-jawed at me and shift it—”

“Stay away. I mean it, Crowley. If it’s demons, there’s going to be holy water flying around, and I don’t want you getting caught in the crossfire.”

“What if it’s angels?” That was the fear that was uppermost in Crowley’s mind. He had no doubt that Aziraphale was clever enough to outwit some demons, especially with the arsenal of holy water he had procured from a local church the year before. But they had no real defense against angels, since hellfire was much more dangerous to obtain and not as conveniently portable. The plan for dealing with Upstairs, inasmuch as they had one, was to insinuate that the Almighty was going to be mighty wrathful if anything happened to the hand-selected new employees She had stationed on Earth. But that idea seemed desperately inadequate now that Crowley was separated from Aziraphale by a mile of gridlocked London streets and unknown entities were about to break down the bookshop door. Crowley pleaded, “You should run and hide somewhere, until we know what it is—”

“I can deal with angels,” Aziraphale said, his voice like a steel blade. “Too late anyway. Can’t talk now, my dear.” In the background of the call, Crowley could hear a loud thump that sounded worryingly like unknown entities breaking down the bookshop door, and then the line went dead.

“Aziraphale?” Crowley all but screamed into his phone. He threw the phone down onto the seat. He considered abandoning the Bentley and flying the rest of the way, but he would have to get out and extend his wings and get airborne, and he was close enough now that he could cover the distance just as fast in the Bentley if everyone would just _move_. With that emphatic thought, he succeeded in clearing a path through the traffic as all the drivers simultaneously got distracted and pulled over to return a text or fiddle with the radio or check out that new restaurant.*** The Bentley took off like a crossbow bolt through the narrow opening in the middle of street, and Crowley finally reached his destination, overshot his usual parking space, and rode up onto the curb in front of the bookshop’s open door. Crowley hurtled out of the Bentley and into the shop, his hand going into his jacket pocket to finger a small syringe filled with holy water, the weapon that he and Aziraphale brought with them whenever they went out. He could hear voices coming from the back room, and he slowed down as he approached in case there really was holy water flying around. Whoever it was who had come for them, they were not taking Aziraphale, not unless they took out Crowley too.

* * *

*His favorite game was to nod eagerly when then asked if he carried this or that rare book, go bring the book out from the back, let them caress its cover and examine its pages, offer a special discount, and then suddenly “remember” that it was already set aside for another customer. Aziraphale disapproved of this practice, partly because it was cruel, mostly because he didn’t like people touching or even looking at his precious books. But he couldn’t argue with the results, which were that those customers went away and never came back.

**Two months before, they had had a scare when the proximity sensor had been tripped by what turned out to be a stray cat whose aura was, for unknown reasons, indistinguishable from that of a demon.

***It doesn’t take a miracle to distract humans. The miracle that Crowley had to use his demonic powers for was to make them realize that they were distracted and should probably pull over for a quick moment.


	2. Chapter 2

Aziraphale hung up the phone. Whatever was going to happen next, he was certain that he didn’t want Crowley to hear it. He sent out a silent plea for the London traffic to cooperate and keep Crowley away until Aziraphale had a chance to deal with whatever this was.

He was a bit surprised at his own confidence that he could deal with it. He never would have imagined himself crouching in the back room of his bookshop brandishing a gun, as he was currently doing. No matter how much weight guns lent to moral arguments, he still found them distasteful. This gun was more distasteful than most, because it was an unappealing shade of fluorescent orange. But it wasn’t the look of the squirt gun that mattered, it was what was inside it. Pure, 100% holy water, so blessed it might as well have been collected from Baby Jesus’s nappy. Any demon who walked in that door who wasn’t Crowley was about to get a face full of it. Aziraphale’s finger tightened on the trigger, his hands steady. He was an angel, after all, and angels were first and foremost warriors of God. Aziraphale had never been much of a warrior, but the basic training was still drilled into him.

And if it wasn’t demons who walked in, but angels? Real warrior angels, the ones who had taken the lessons of mindless conformity and unquestioning obedience and casual brutality to heart? Aziraphale didn’t stand a chance against them in a fair fight. But he had no intention of fighting fair. Enough of Crowley’s cynicism had worn off on him over the years that he recognized that, like a just war or a silver lining, the whole idea of a fair fight was hopelessly naïve anyway. If possible, he would avoid a fight completely by outwitting them with his brilliance and dazzling them with his name-dropping of the Almighty and his stories of how he had drunk wine with just Her last year and was now working for Her directly. If that failed, well, there was always Plan B. Aziraphale really hoped that he wouldn’t have to resort to Plan B, but he patted his overcoat just to make sure everything was in place for it. It was.

A moment after the front door to the bookshop had been kicked open with a rude thump, Aziraphale heard footsteps progressing slowly through the shop. There were a lot of footsteps, from at least three or four sets of feet. Aziraphale heard a softer thump, which sounded suspiciously like a book being knocked from a shelf onto the floor. He tightened his grip on the squirt gun. If they were doing anything to his books, they would be very sorry indeed.

The intruders entered the back room, and Aziraphale stopped in the act of aiming the squirt gun. This was something he had not expected. There were demons in the party, two of them, but they were accompanied by two angels. A mixed group was a contingency Aziraphale had not prepared for. Himself and Crowley aside, angels and demons did not typically go on missions together. But Heaven and Hell had joined forces in the aftermath of the Almost-Apocalypse to try to kill Aziraphale and Crowley, and it looked like in the spirit of cooperation they were renewing that temporary alliance to once again try to kill Aziraphale and Crowley. It seemed that the one thing that could bring these ancestral enemies together was their desire to kill Aziraphale and Crowley. It was almost heartwarming.

Aziraphale would have happily dispatched the demons with a squirt of holy water and worried about the angels later, but there was a problem. In apparent anticipation of his tactics, the angels had entered the room first, and they were shielding their demon allies with umbrellas. Moreover, the demons were kitted out from head to toe in hooded rain ponchos, goggles, rubber gloves, and Wellington boots.* Aziraphale stared in disbelief. After all the planning he and Crowley had done, somehow this countermeasure had never occurred to them. Was he really about to be defeated by a pair of Wellies?

“Aziraphale,” said one of the angels, in their standard greeting. “You traitorous demon-loving scum.”

Aziraphale sighed. “Hello, Sandalphon,” he said politely. “Hello, Uriel. I hesitate to point out the hypocrisy, but it seems that I’m not the only one consorting with demons nowadays.”

“This is a temporary alliance,” Sandalphon said haughtily. “Enemy of my enemy, sharing of critical resources, and all that. As soon as we have destroyed you and your demon boyfriend, we will once again resume hostilities with these odious, repellant abominations.”

“Hey,” said one of the demons, whom Aziraphale recognized, with white-hot fury, as one of the demons who had nearly disincorporated Crowley with a cricket bat the year before.** “Get your halo out of your arse, you self-righteous wankers.”

Aziraphale thought maybe he should try to get the angels and demons to fight each other so he could make his move, whatever that might be, while they were distracted. That seemed like the sort of clever thing a scrappy underdog would do in a situation like this.

“Are you going to let those, er, smelly demons talk to you like that?” he tried. “We’re better than them, aren’t we?”

“Is that the best plan you can come up with?” asked Uriel, sounding bored. “Try to get us to go after each other instead of you?”

“Well,” Aziraphale said, floundering for a better plan, “yes.”

“I would say nice try, but sarcasm is beneath us. That’s really more _their_ thing.” Uriel jerked her head back toward her demon counterparts.

“Where is the demon Crowley?” the demon who had spoken up before asked. “I have some unfinished business with him. Did he run away, like the sniveling coward he is?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, with another incipient plan forming. Maybe he could at least get them away from the bookshop before Crowley returned. “That’s what he did. He ran away, and I don’t expect he’ll be coming back because he was so afraid. So we might as well be off to, well, wherever we’re going.” He wondered if it would be Heaven or Hell and which would be worse.

Outside, there was a sound of a roaring car engine, then screeching brakes, then running footsteps. A moment later, Crowley came crashing into the room as promised. He almost ran into the two demons, each of whom grabbed one of his arms.

“How is it that you two managed to stop the Apocalypse?” the lead demon asked incredulously. It was a fair question, and one that Aziraphale had often wondered himself.

“Crowley, I told you to stay away,” Aziraphale groaned. So much for getting the danger away before Crowley returned. And Crowley hadn’t even taken a moment to think of a plan that could help them both out of the situation, instead just barreling in to be taken prisoner as well.

Crowley didn’t seem to notice that he had been taken prisoner. He ignored the intruders and just stared at Aziraphale. His sunglasses were on as usual, but Aziraphale could see the panic in his eyes anyway. “You all right, angel?”

“Just tickety-boo,” Aziraphale said, because he knew it would relax Crowley.

It did. Crowley nodded resolutely, then said casually to the intruders, “Boy, I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes right now.”

There was a pause, then Sandalphon said in a resigned tone, “And why is that, demon?”

“Because our boss is going to be some kind of wrathful when She finds out that you’re preventing Her top two hand-picked employees from doing their divine duties. I mean, I would not want that kind of wrath coming down on me. It’s like, thunderbolts out of the blue, and locusts, and floods, and people turning into pillars of salt, and let’s see, what’s else? You can read all about it in the Bible, there’s only about seventy-five copies in here.”

So Crowley had come in with a plan, of sorts. It was the one they had agreed to in the event of an incursion by Heaven’s forces, putting the fear of the big boss into them. It seemed less likely to work now that Heaven and Hell were working together, as that was an indication that Heaven was not all that concerned about even keeping up appearances that they cared about divine righteousness anymore. The pigs were starting to look a lot like the farmers. But it was the best plan on the table at the moment, and Aziraphale appreciated Crowley’s efforts to sell it.

“About that,” Uriel said. “It is true that we got a memo from the Almighty that you two are now working for her and under her protection, but that same memo also included a long list of vegetables ranked in order of how funny their shapes are***, so it’s clear that She’s not entirely on Her rocker. So we’ve been meeting about it for the past year, and we finally decided what to do about it.” She raised her eyes and addressed the ceiling. “Almighty One,” she intoned. “We are about to destroy the principality Aziraphale and the demon Crowley with hellfire and holy water, respectively. We’ll make sure we use the right one on each of them this time,” she added, sparing a glare at Aziraphale and Crowley before turning her gaze back to the ceiling. “So is that all right with you? If you have any objections to this plan, please send us a sign.”

There was utter silence and stillness. Aziraphale and Crowley both looked around hopefully, but there continued to be nothing but utter silence and stillness. Then, Crowley said, with admirable enthusiasm, “There it is! The sign!”

Sandalphon rolled his eyes and said, “Where?”

“Outside on the street. The traffic light turned red. And red – means stop,” Crowley finished weakly.

“All right, that’s enough of that,” Sandalphon said to the demons. “Would you like to do the honors with the hellfire first? For his blasphemy, I want this demon to watch the principality burn.”

“Our pleasure,” the lead demon said. “Haven’t seen an angel bonfire since the old days.” He took from his pocket a container that held a small flame. Taking off its lid, he blew gently, and a column of hellfire appeared in the middle of the room.

“Wait,” Crowley said, the earlier snark gone from his voice and replaced by desperation. “You can’t– what, you’re going to just – right here –” He suddenly kicked the lead demon solidly in the shin, making him swear, and twisted to try to get free from the grip he was being held in, but the second, larger demon kept his hold. Sandalphon and Uriel drew what looked like black handguns from holsters at their hips and pointed them at Crowley.

“Don’t worry, demon, you won’t be missing him for long,” Uriel said. “You’re next.” She cocked her squirt gun menacingly. It was a much more impressive-looking squirt gun than the one Aziraphale was holding, and Aziraphale felt a painful twist in his stomach at seeing it pointed at Crowley. Aziraphale laid his own fluorescent orange squirt gun on a side table. He couldn’t use it now that Crowley was the only unprotected demon in the room, and he also felt rather silly holding it.

“Aziraphale!” Crowley was still struggling vainly to free himself from the demons’ grip.

“Crowley, it’s all right –”

“No speeches, no tearful goodbyes,” Sandalphon said. “You’ve made us all suffer enough as it is. Just walk into the hellfire or we’ll have the demons push you in.”

Aziraphale held his head high. He was going to have to resort to Plan B after all. He willed Crowley to stop struggling and to just look at him. He had a message to convey, and it was critical that Crowley understand. Just what the message was that Aziraphale wanted to convey, he wasn’t quite sure. He did not want to convey the details of Plan B, because Crowley had not been involved in the development of Plan B, and if he was aware of what Plan B entailed, he would surely try to stop Aziraphale from implementing it. But once Plan B was in motion, Crowley would have to react very quickly. Normally Aziraphale wouldn’t worry about Crowley being slow on the uptake, but he was concerned that Crowley was distracted by Aziraphale’s impending demise and would be even more distracted once all Plan B’s unpleasant details became apparent. The long version of the message Aziraphale needed to convey was _I’m about to do something that is probably going to get me killed, and possibly you too, and the only way we have an ice lolly’s chance in Hell of surviving this is if you keep it together_. That was a bit convoluted to convey via eye contact, so Aziraphale would stick to the essentials. He needed to tell Crowley to be ready, but not what for.

Aziraphale took a step toward the column of hellfire. He had to do it now. The positioning was perfect, and he wanted to sing out a hymn of praise for Sandalphon’s decision to destroy him first. He didn’t know what he would have done if they had decided to go in the opposite order. At the same time, he didn’t want to appear too eager to go to his demise, lest he arouse suspicions, and he still needed to convey his message to Crowley. So he took another slow step forward, then another. When he was close enough that he could actually feel the heat from the flames, he looked through the fire at Crowley, who had finally stopped struggling and was now meeting his eye. Aziraphale had known that Crowley would at least meet his eye one more time. With a single look, Aziraphale focused all his concentration on sending the message. _Be ready._ There were a lot of other things in the message, important things, but he knew that Crowley knew them all anyway.

Some subtle change behind Crowley’s dark glasses convinced Aziraphale that the message had been received. Knowing that he had done all he could do, Aziraphale took a deep breath and decided to face his fate, whatever it might be, with equanimity. He stepped into the hellfire. There was an instant in which it didn’t even hurt. It just felt warm and strangely wet, like bathwater. Then that instant was over, and a long series of instants followed in which it did hurt. A lot. Like, well, like being on fire. Aziraphale opened his mouth to scream, but instead of his voice rushing out, he felt fire rush in. Someone was screaming, but it wasn’t him. There was a sizzling sound that he realized was his skin cooking, and a horrendous smell that he realized was his feathers burning. Then, after what felt like two hours but was probably two seconds, the instant he had been waiting for finally arrived, the instant when Plan B was initiated. It was initiated with a series of popping sounds and a great bellow of flame when the fireworks he had stuffed into his overcoat ignited. Hellfireworks, he thought, something the world had never seen before. Distantly, above the pops and sizzling, he could hear shouting and scuffling, and he hoped that meant that Crowley had reacted quickly enough to save himself, at least. As for Aziraphale, a hellfireworks display seemed a fitting end to his existence. He felt himself fall to his knees as the flames consumed him, deciding he might as well just relax and enjoy the show.

* * *

*Hell had spent years in research and development on this new defense. Research and development was slow going in Hell because of demons’ lack of imagination.

**This was the demon known as Al, whose fashion sense had not improved in the year he had been stationed on Earth.

***The top of the list: rutabagas, which also top the list of vegetables with the funniest names. Lately, the Almighty had been obsessing over vegetables, because the humans’ domestication of plants was yet another example of how they didn’t really need Her anymore.


	3. Chapter 3

Crowley was furious. Any strong emotion he felt tended to express itself as anger, and right now he felt himself drowning in a roiling ocean of strong emotions.

How could he have let his hard-won paranoia subside to the point that he had thought for even a moment that they were safe? God’s protection was clearly worth about as much as a noodle in a hailstorm. Right this moment, She was probably in the ruins of Eden talking to turnips, unaware or uncaring about what was happening to them. And even if She did know or care, She obviously wasn’t in charge anymore.

Now Aziraphale was taking slow, halting steps toward the column of hellfire. Crowley wriggled like a landed fish to try to get out of the demons’ grip so that he could do something to try to stop what was about to happen. Angry as he was at God and Heaven and Hell, he was angry at Aziraphale too, for not fighting harder. He knew that was irrational, since there was no point in fighting. They were outnumbered and outgunned and, embarrassingly enough, outwitted. But Crowley couldn’t help but be angry anyway, channeling that anger into his struggles so he wouldn’t have to see what was happening. He wished that Aziraphale was struggling too, was forcing the demons to push him into the hellfire. Hard as that would be to watch, anything would be better than watching Aziraphale calmly approaching his destruction, emanating grace and nobility and all the other things he embodied that were about to be burned to ashes.

When Aziraphale was mere inches away from the hellfire, Crowley finally stopped struggling to he could look at him one more time. If he couldn’t do anything else, at least he could do that. Aziraphale’s face was still as a marble statue, but his eyes were bright as they glinted in the light of the hellfire. He looked right at Crowley, and his expression held the familiar mix of exasperation and affection that it always did when he looked at Crowley, but there was something else too. Some tiny angling of the brows or narrowing of the eyes told Crowley that, all evidence to the contrary, Aziraphale wasn’t done fighting yet.

So Crowley prepared himself, tensing all his muscles like a cobra about to strike. He would back whatever action Aziraphale took, although their menu of options looked pretty limited at this point, so Crowley didn’t have the faintest idea what he was preparing himself to do. But he prepared himself nevertheless.

His eyes still fixed on Crowley, Aziraphale took that last step. Crowley felt a scream rip out of his own chest, but he couldn’t hear it over the blood rushing through his ears. Aziraphale was being consumed by the hellfire. His wings had come out, and every feather was ablaze. The angel’s face was scrunched up in agony like some poor sinful soul in a Hieronymus Bosch painting.* Crowley had just a moment to wish, more than anything, that the angels would just fire their holy-water squirt guns at him now, because being a puddle of black goo on the floor suddenly seemed much more appealing than the alternative.

Suddenly, there was a series of loud popping sounds, and then a giant fireball whizzed out of the column of hellfire, shooting flames into every corner of the room. That included the corner that Sandalphon and Uriel were standing in. Sparks hit the two angels, who immediately went up in flames like the Hindenburg. They started screaming in agony, which would have satisfied Crowley immensely except that he knew it was the same agony Aziraphale was currently feeling. Sandalphon and Uriel dropped their now-smoldering umbrellas and their holy water squirt guns so that they could more effectively wave their arms around in panic.

Crowley and his two demon guards had also been hit by stray sparks from the unexpected fireball, but of course were unharmed.** But the demons were shouting in surprise at what was happening, and Crowley felt the grip on his arms loosen just a smidge. He didn’t waste a second in making his move. He didn’t know what was happening either, but this must be what Aziraphale had wanted him to be ready for. He had maybe five seconds to get to Aziraphale and put those flames out before the angel was completely burned to a crisp, and the only things standing in his way were the demon Al and his minion.

In one smoothly serpentine move, Crowley twisted out of the demons’ grip, got the holy-water-filled syringe out of his jacket pocket, and stuck the syringe down the back of Al the demon’s rain poncho, depressing the plunger. Al screamed and started smoking, and his minion turned to see what was happening only to get the remainder of the syringe’s contents sprayed onto his face where there was a gap of exposed skin between the rain-poncho hood and the goggles. He also started screaming and smoking.

Crowley was already throwing himself across the room to the column of hellfire, where he collided into Aziraphale with a full-body tackle. Before they even hit the ground, Crowley’s wings were out, beating frantically at the flames that were engulfing Aziraphale. The hellfire started to die down, and Crowley used his wings to smother any remaining flames while he stared into the angel’s face.

“Aziraphale?” Crowley shouted. He was terrified that he had been too slow. Most of Aziraphale’s clothing had been burned away, with just a few scraps of fabric melted into his skin. His skin itself was a patchwork of angry red, ashen white, and charred black. Worst of all, his beautiful white wings were now ruined, most of the feathers burned down to blackened shafts. They looked like the skeleton wings of a bat. Aziraphale’s eyes were closed, and Crowley couldn’t even tell if he was still alive. “Aziraphale?” Crowley shouted again, almost choking on the name.

Aziraphale opened his eyes, his blue eyes the only familiar feature in his ravaged face. “Crowley,” he said, his voice hoarse with inhaled hellsmoke. “My – “

“Shh,” Crowley said. He wished he knew how to be soothing. That was never something he had bothered to get the hang of. “Just take it easy while I figure out what to do, all right?”

Aziraphale shook his head. “My – my books.”

Crowley felt dazed. He started laughing, or crying, hysterically. It was just so _Aziraphale_ , it hurt. “Forget your books,” Crowley said through his sobs. “You were just on fire.”

“Please, Crowley,” Aziraphale said. “Don’t – don’t let them burn again.”

Crowley looked around the room. He noticed that, while he had been completely preoccupied with Aziraphale’s condition, Sandalphon and Uriel had been reduced to cinders gently drifting down to the floor, and Al and the other demon were also on the floor in the form of puddles of goo. Some of the books that lined the shelves and tables of the room were lightly smoldering, ignited by the hellfire explosion.

“Fine,” Crowley said, forcing himself to step away from Aziraphale long enough to save the books. He knew that watching them burn probably hurt Aziraphale as much as his physical injuries did, and Crowley could at least do something about the books. He picked up the fluorescent orange squirt gun that Aziraphale had laid down on a table and started using it like a fire extinguisher on the numerous small book blazes around the room, taking care not to let any holy water drip onto himself. He was experiencing unpleasant flashbacks to the day he had burst into the bookshop to find it on fire and Aziraphale gone, dead for all Crowley had known at the time. That had been the single worst moment of Crowley’s six millennia of existence up to that point. In the few years since then, he had beaten that record twice. The year before, on a mountaintop in the Armenian highlands, when Crowley had watched a sword go through Aziraphale’s chest with no hope of re-incorporation for the angel. And now, the worst moment of them all, when Aziraphale had been almost burned to cinders before his eyes and was in unimaginable pain and Crowley had no idea how to heal him or if it was even possible.

“What was that, anyway?” Crowley asked Aziraphale, mostly to keep the angel talking but also because he was curious. “Looked like fireworks.”

“That’s because they were fireworks. Got the idea from Agnes Nutter.”

“You’re the nutter,” Crowley said. “That was your plan, using yourself as a weapon?”

“Not my first plan. Plan B. How are the books?”

“Salvageable,” Crowley said shortly. He hoped the same was true for Aziraphale. He could feel incipient anger forming at how Aziraphale had done something so reckless, but he couldn’t bring himself to direct any anger at the angel now. Not when he was hurt so badly.

Crowley noticed that the holy water was highly effective in putting out the hellfire, which he supposed made sense. Equal and opposite forces and all that. So he took the squirt gun over to where Aziraphale was still lying, curled up on his side on the floor, and gingerly emptied the remaining holy water in the chamber over some of the worst of the burns, concentrating on his wings.

Aziraphale gasped. “Be careful,” he said.

Crowley froze. “Am I hurting you? I thought it might help—” He suddenly hated being a demon. All he could do was hurt. He was bloody useless when it came to making things better.

“It’s helping,” Aziraphale said. “Feels good. Just – be careful. Don’t splash yourself.”

“I’m not an idiot,” Crowley said, annoyed. Since Aziraphale said it felt good, and he didn’t have anything else to soothe the pain, Crowley collected the two deadly-looking squirt guns that had fallen from the angels’ burning hands and carefully emptied their chambers onto two small cloths that he thought into existence. For good measure, he squeezed out onto one of the cloths every last drop of holy water from the syringe he had used as a weapon. He didn’t want any of it to go to waste, since it was all they had. With sudden inspiration, he manifested a pair of rubber gloves into existence so that he could safely bring the dampened cloths over to Aziraphale. Out of simple spite, he didn’t want to steal any ideas from Hell, but he had to reluctantly concede that the gloves had been a good idea.

“Here,” Crowley said, handing the cloths to Aziraphale. “Put these wherever it hurts most.”

“Thank you, my dear,” Aziraphale said weakly. He seemed indecisive about where to put the cloths, probably because it hurt everywhere, but finally settled on where his wings emerged from his shoulder blades. He sighed at the modicum of relief the holy water provided.

Crowley knelt next to Aziraphale, unsure of what to do next. He reached out a tentative hand to try to inspect some of the damage, but Aziraphale jerked away, then moaned in pain at the movement.

“Don’t touch me,” the angel said.

“I’m sorry,” Crowley said, unexpectedly hurt. “I’m just trying to—”

“I thought you said you _weren’t_ an idiot,” Aziraphale said. “I’m dripping with holy water. Stay away from me.”

“I’m wearing gloves,” Crowley snapped.

“You shouldn’t even be in this room. Holy water all over the place.”

“Most of it is vaporized by now.” Crowley wondered idly whether holy water vapor retained its potency, or whether it had to be liquid to be holy. He had never been so cavalier about potential exposure to holy water, but that was the least of his worries now.

“Crowley.” Aziraphale’s voice was a bit stronger now, maybe from the soothing action of the holy water, maybe because the initial shock of his injuries had worn off. “It won’t take them long to notice that their assassination crew went missing. They’re going to come after us. The big guns this time.”

“Yes, obviously.” That was higher on the list of Crowley’s worries, right below his concern about Aziraphale’s injuries. His mind had been working on the problem in the background. “I suppose Tadfield is our best bet.” Crowley was not enthusiastic about the prospect of being a fugitive in Lower Tadfield yet again. There had to be far more exciting places to be a fugitive in.*** But Tadfield was the only place they knew of that was protected from detection by occult and/or ethereal forces by the psychic shield Adam Young had unwittingly constructed as a child. Besides, the Pulsifer-Devices were there, and they had shown themselves to be not totally useless.

Aziraphale nodded. “Agreed.”

“All right then. Can you move?”

Aziraphale made a slight movement upward, then collapsed back down in pain. “No,” he said.

“Let me help,” Crowley said, reaching out to take one of the less-burned areas of Aziraphale’s arm with his rubber-gloved hand. His touch was gentle, but Aziraphale screamed at the contact, and Crowley withdrew his hand as though he himself had been burned.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, feeling lower than snake shit.

Aziraphale shook his head. “ _I’m_ sorry. I just can’t. It – it just really hurts.”

Crowley took a deep breath to steady his nerves. It didn’t work. “We’ll have to make our stand here then,” he said. He waved a hand to manifest a mattress underneath Aziraphale, because seeing the angel lying on the floor just made him feel worse. He included some silk sheets, figuring those would be the softest against Aziraphale’s burned skin.

“Crowley, my dear. _You_ should go to Tadfield.”

“Not happening,” Crowley said flatly.

“I thought you’d say that,” Aziraphale said sadly.

“Of course, what else would I say?” Crowley scowled furiously. Then he stood up, taking off his rubber gloves and throwing them down. “I have to go grab my phone out of the Bentley. We’ll just bring Tadfield to us.”

* * *

*That Hieronymus Bosch had sure gotten his jollies in some strange places.

**To demons, hellfire tickles a bit. It’s a mildly pleasant sensation, like when your cat licks your hand. To angels, in contrast, the sensation of hellfire is that of your cat biting off your hand and eating it in front of you.

***A partial list of those places includes Rio de Janeiro, New Orleans, Bangkok, Berlin, Cape Town, and then continues for 186,118 more places before reaching Tadfield, which ranks just above College Station, Texas.


	4. Chapter 4

Anathema’s phone rang. She accepted this as the inevitable order of the universe, because she had just put baby Rowan* down for a nap and Sage was, possibly for the first time in her three years of life, sitting quietly with a picture book, and Anathema had just allowed herself to entertain the thought that maybe she had the rarest of opportunities to put herself down for a nap too. So, of course, it was time for the phone to ring. She glanced at the screen to see if it was anything important. When she saw who it was, she took her phone into the little office nook where Newt was sitting at his desk doing sums for work and put the phone on speaker so that her husband could also be part of what would undoubtedly be an exciting conversation. “Hello, Crowley,” she said to the phone, and Newt put down his pencil and looked up with a mix of curiosity and dread.

“I need you to come to London, now, and bring Adam with you.” Crowley’s voice was panicked, which was to be expected. He and Aziraphale only came to them when they were desperate. But he also sounded like he was on the verge of tears, which was a state that Anathema had never imagined the demon being in. Crowley went on, “I know you helped us out last time and the only thing you got in return was that thank-you card from Aziraphale that was signed from both of us but I’m sure you know was really just from him. But if you help us this time, I will make all your dreams come true. I promise, whatever you want, it’s yours. Just come to London now –”

“Crowley,” Newt interrupted. “Any hint you could give us as to what’s going on?”

“Those bastards hurt Aziraphale,” Crowley said, and Anathema could hear the tears in his voice now. “Burned him with hellfire. He’s hurt badly, and I don’t know what to do.” Almost as an afterthought, he added, “And now Heaven and Hell will be coming for us. We killed two archangels and a high-ranking demon and, well, some other demon no one cares about, and Above and Below will be none too pleased—”

“You want us,” Newt said slowly, “to come meet you in London, where the forces of Heaven and Hell are amassing against you?”

“Yes, aren’t you listening?” There was a pause as Crowley apparently realized that he hadn’t been doing a great job pitching the idea. “Don’t worry,” he added impatiently, “they don’t care about humans one way or the other. They won’t do anything to you, it’s us they want.”

Newt looked at Anathema, who shrugged and said, “What do you need?”

“Adam, first of all. Don’t come without Adam. And whatever spell books and magical amulets and stinky herbs you have, we’ll need them all. And we need you here like ten minutes ago.”

Anathema looked at Newt, who nodded. “We’re on our way,” she said. Crowley gave her a Soho address and then hung up, sounding very distracted and out of his mind with worry.

“Is this a good idea?” Newt asked, like it was a idle question to pass the time with.

“We can drop the kids off at your mother’s house,” Anathema said, already stuffing magical supplies into one bag and nappies and toys into another. “It’s on the way.”

“Yes, but do you think helping Aziraphale and Crowley fight the forces of Heaven and Hell is a good idea? Sounds a bit, er, dangerous, and like it might be a lost cause anyway.”

Anathema sighed. “It might be. But those two did save all of humanity.”

“Well, we helped.”

“A bit. But if weren’t for them, we would have had to live through the Book of Revelation before Sage and Rowan were even born. We owe them our children’s existence.”

“Well, when you put it like that…” Newt conceded.

“And Aziraphale is so sweet. Remember how kind and helpful he was when he was staying here last year?” The cottage had rapidly deteriorated from the shipshape condition it had been in when Aziraphale had been there, obsessively helping with the housework. Anathema was genuinely sad to hear that the angel was hurt. “And Crowley …” she tried to think of something nice to say about Crowley, finally settling on, “Well, he loves Aziraphale so much. He must be so devastated.”

“And Sage adores her Uncle Crowley,” Newt added. Anathema decided not to remind her husband that, for months after Uncle Crowley’s departure, they had had to gently discourage Sage from putting worms in her hair and screaming _I’m a demon_ , as that seemed to be a point in favor of letting Crowley be destroyed by the forces of Heaven and Hell.

“Exactly,” Anathema said instead. “Why don’t you text Adam while I get the kids ready?”

In a miraculously short amount of time, they had put their sleepy children into their carseats in the back of Dick Turpin, stuffed the boot of the car with enough supplies to sustain a twenty-person crew for a monthlong expedition into the Amazon rainforest,** and were heading down the lane to pick up Adam, who was waiting in the front garden of his house. The teenager, who was on the verge of becoming an attractively disreputable-looking young man, squeezed into Dick Turpin’s backseat, wedged between the two carseats. Dog jumped in after him and settled down in his lap.

“You’re bringing Dog?” Newt asked.

“We might need him,” Adam said as Dog licked his face and yapped excitedly. Newt had filled Adam in on only the barest details of their mission in his text message***, but as usual Adam seemed to know more about what was going on than anyone else did.

With that, Dick Turpin, grumbling a little under the weight of its passengers and cargo, made its way toward the motorway and London.

* * *

*Rowan was now eight months old. Although it can be hard to tell such things in children so young, Anathema was confident that Rowan’s temperament was the complete opposite of his big sister’s. He was the calmest baby in the world, more capable of being reasoned with than most adults. He obediently fell asleep whenever he was laid down in his crib, was on a regular clockwork schedule for his feedings and nappy changes, and even cried in an adorable mewing fashion and stopped crying immediately upon being picked up. Anathema attributed his good nature to the blessing Aziraphale had placed upon her pregnant belly as thanks for the help she and Newt had provided. She had needed a baby imbued with divine grace to balance out the hellion she was already raising.

**In other words, the typical amount of supplies needed when taking an infant and a toddler to Grandma’s house for the afternoon.

***The message had read as follows: “Going to London. Need you with us. [angel emoji] [devil emoji] Pick you up in five minutes.”


	5. Chapter 5

Crowley hung up and stuck his phone into his pocket. He had made the call in the front part of the bookshop because he hadn’t wanted to describe what had happened while Aziraphale was listening. He had known there was a good chance he would fall apart, and Aziraphale had enough to worry about without worrying about Crowley too. Crowley took a moment to collect himself, getting his shuddering breaths under control. Then he returned to the back room.

“Good news,” he said, going for an optimistic tone. “The calvary’s on its way.” Aziraphale didn’t respond, and he was lying very still. Suddenly terrified, Crowley dropped down onto the mattress next to the angel. “Aziraphale?” Aziraphale didn’t stir, and his eyes were closed. Crowley reached out slowly, his hand trembling. He let his fingers barely touch Aziraphale’s face, and the angel’s eyes flew open with a pained gasp.

“Sorry,” Crowley said for the third time in less than twenty minutes. “I thought you were –” He stopped. “You have to stay awake, all right?”

Crowley realized that it was a selfish request. It might have been more merciful to just let Aziraphale drift off into unconsciousness, where he might never wake up but would at least be free of the pain. But Crowley was a demon, and he had no problem with being selfish. What he wanted was for Aziraphale’s eyes to stay open, so that Crowley could still recognize him despite the rest of him being scarred beyond recognition. He wanted Aziraphale to keep talking, so that Crowley could take comfort in the fact that he was still with him. Most of all, he wanted Aziraphale to keep fighting and not to leave him.

Selfless as he was, Aziraphale saw the pain in Crowley’s eyes and wanted to ease it more than he wanted to end his own. So he nodded. “All right.”

Crowley put on his discarded rubber gloves and used them to gently remove the cloths Aziraphale had applied to his shoulder blades. He could feel through the gloves that the cloths were now bone-dry and useless, so he flung them impatiently aside. Upon examination, the burns that had been in contact with the holy water were now slightly less severe than the surrounding burns, indicating that the holy water had had some restorative effect. But they had completely depleted their holy-water arsenal, so there was nothing else Crowley could do for now. Frustrated, he took off the gloves and flung them aside too. He could see that Aziraphale’s flesh, even where the holy water had been, was now dry and cracked like the molted snake skins that Crowley used to delight in leaving in inappropriate places.* There was no risk in Crowley being exposed to holy water now, because all the holy water had seeped into the burns or sizzled away into the air or otherwise dissipated. Despite his fervent desire for more holy water to treat the burns, Crowley was also grateful that he didn’t have to use gloves to touch Aziraphale anymore, like he was some hazardous waste product. Not that he could touch Aziraphale anyway, as the slightest contact caused the angel unbearable pain. That was bothering Crowley to an unreasonable degree, that he couldn’t even hold Aziraphale’s hand or stroke his face or wrap his arms around him or any of the other things he wanted to do to comfort Aziraphale and himself.

Aziraphale was now shivering. His whole body was trembling in spasms, and every movement caused him to whimper in pain. “Are you cold?” Crowley asked.

“A bit,” Aziraphale said, in a voice that was trying to be brave.

It was warm in the room. Crowley thought grimly that it couldn’t be a good sign that Aziraphale felt cold when he had just been in the million-degree** heat of hellfire. About to summon a blanket out of thin air, Crowley paused. He had another idea.

Crowley lay down next to Aziraphale on the mattress, facing the angel. He extended his wings and – slowly, carefully, gently, as though he were giving a butterfly a backrub – let his upper wing drape over Aziraphale. “Is this all right?” Crowley asked anxiously.

“Yes,” Aziraphale breathed out. “It’s wonderful. Thank you, my dear.”

Face-to-face as they were, Crowley could see some of the pain ease out of Aziraphale, and the angel stopped shivering as well. Encouraged, Crowley wrapped his wing more fully around Aziraphale’s body. His feathers were apparently soft enough that they didn’t chafe against the angel’s burns, and the wing was as warm as a down blanket. Crowley also inched closer to Aziraphale, close enough that he could feel the heat radiating from the burns. He was grateful that there was, after all, something he could do to ease Aziraphale’s pain while they waited for help. Being this close to Aziraphale, wrapping him in the cocoon of his wing, was even more comforting than being able to hold his hand or hug him would have been.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said softly. His face was close enough that Crowley could feel his warm breath against his neck. “Would you mind taking off your sunglasses?”

If any other being in Heaven, Hell, or Earth had made that request, Crowley would have told them to stuff it. But when Aziraphale requested it, Crowley immediately took off his sunglasses and tucked them into his front jacket pocket.

Aziraphale looked straight into his eyes. The angel had always had a way of making Crowley feel that he was looking right into the very core of his being. Now, at a distance of mere inches, the effect was overwhelming. It was as though he could also see into the core of his own being, reflected in Aziraphale’s blue eyes. Seeing himself as the angel saw him.

“You’re crying,” Aziraphale said. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

“Neither did I.” That was a lie, of course. He didn’t tell Aziraphale about that other time he had cried, right there in that burning bookstore, when the world was about to end and all Crowley cared about was that he had lost his best friend.

Aziraphale smiled. It looked like it hurt, but he kept smiling anyway. “You’re so good, Crowley.”

This was an old game of theirs. One of their oldest***. Aziraphale would say something about how, deep down, Crowley was at least a little bit good, and Crowley would get miffed and deny it or warn the angel not to go around spreading lies about him and so on. It was so ingrained into their rhythm by now that Crowley could have snapped off an automatic rejoinder without even having to think about it.

But, this time, he did think about it. “Only because of you,” he said, and felt the sting of fresh tears threatening to break free. “You’re a good influence on me.” He said it like an accusation.

Aziraphale continued smiling, but his eyes were starting to become unfocused. “You’re better than me,” Aziraphale said. His speech was now slurred, like they had just finished off a bottle of wine. “Always have been.”

Through his tears, Crowley snorted at how ridiculous that was. “Without you, I’d be worse than Satan,” he said. He could see Aziraphale’s eyes were starting to close, and he gripped the angel tighter with his wing and spoke faster and louder. He was starting to hiss, always a sure sign that he was losing his cool. “I’d be the one they all feared. I’d burn this world to a cinder. They wouldn’t even dare speak my name, if there were any left to speak it.” Aziraphale’s eyes closed. “Do you hear what I’m saying, angel?”

“Give them hell,” Aziraphale murmured. His face relaxed, as he slipped into the blessedly pain-free realm of unconsciousness.

“Aziraphale?” No response. “Aziraphale!” Crowley shouted it this time, right in the angel’s ear. Willing to risk hurting Aziraphale and hating himself for it a bit, Crowley reached over and placed his hand on Aziraphale’s shoulder, giving him a gentle shake. Aziraphale flopped around limply, but otherwise there was nothing.

The only thing that was keeping Crowley from losing it completely was that he could still feel Aziraphale’s aura, faint but there. He forced himself to focus on that. Closing his eyes, he reached out with all his power to a Garden, overgrown and surrounded by desolate mountains, where he imagined a barmy old woman was digging in the dirt to interrogate some carrots. Crowley addressed the woman in his mind.

“Listen, You –” he paused, thinking of how Aziraphale would be giving him a disapproving look right now if he was capable of it, urging him to be respectful. “Almighty One,” he finished. “We asked for Your protection, and You promised we would have it. Sort of. I did request it in writing, if you remember. But this, this is not what I’d call being protected. And if it’s too much to ask You to protect both of us, please just protect him. Heal him. He’s the best angel You ever created. He loves You and he loves humanity and every single thing he’s ever done has been the right and just and moral thing. He doesn’t deserve this. Please, if You heal him, I’ll do anything You want. I’ll go door to door spreading the good news or stand on street corners and sing Your bloody praises all day long. _Please_.” Crowley put all his energy into that last word.

There was no sound except for the low hum of the street sounds outside, no sign other than the cycling of the traffic light from green to yellow to red. Nothing but the ordinary everyday human world. “You can just fuck off then!” Crowley shouted. “You never were any good for anything. This is why humanity is abandoning You in droves. All You do is make them suffer, You psychopath. Amen.”

His faint hope at divine intervention gone, Crowley checked his phone to see what time it was and how much longer it would likely be until the Tadfield crew arrived. He’d rather have humans on his side anyway, at least they were compassionate and imaginative and brave. He hoped they would arrive before Above or Below did, but either way he wasn’t moving from this spot. All he had to offer Aziraphale was the meager comfort of his wing.

* * *

*Among those places had been at the base of Eden’s Tree of Life, in the rodent section of Noah’s Ark, and in Cleopatra’s bedchambers.

**This is an approximate estimate of hellfire’s temperature (in Fahrenheit; that’s 555,538 degrees Celsius). No one knows the actual temperature, because no thermometer can withstand being stuck into hellfire unless it’s demonic in nature. And demons haven’t gotten around to inventing a thermometer yet because they have better things to do with their time.

***Technically, their oldest game was chess, as that was the first one they had played together, when it was all the rage in Persia shortly after its invention in the sixth century. They hadn’t known one another all that well at the time, but Crowley had challenged Aziraphale to a game, figuring he could embarrass the angel with a stinging defeat, and Aziraphale had accepted the challenge, figuring he could use it as an opportunity to prove the inherent superiority of Heaven. They had played to a draw. Afterwards, Crowley had declared that chess was a dull game anyway, not one of humanity’s finer inventions, and challenged Aziraphale to a drinking game instead. That was the first game in which Crowley had succeeded in embarrassing the angel with a stinging defeat. Most of their subsequent games were also various forms of drinking games.


	6. Chapter 6

Having stopped at his mum’s house to drop off their little angel and demon where they would be safe, Newt continued to drive into London at the most reckless speed Dick Turpin could manage.*

“Can this car go any faster?” Adam inquired from the backseat.

“That’s a question engineers like to debate at the pub,” Newt said. “The consensus is that it might be possible if you get it started with a good push down a hill.”

Dog happily stuck his head out the window to feel the wind whistle through his floppy ears.

They arrived in Soho, and Anathema read off turn-by-turn directions to the bookshop address from her phone.** They saw the bookshop, with the Bentley parked unceremoniously halfway up the curb in front.

“All right, there it is,” Newt said. “Now we just have to find a place to park. I think a see a spot up there – no, there’s _No Parking_ lines. Well, we’ll go round the block.”

Three minutes later, he said, “Finally, there’s one – dammit, that bastard in the flashy sports car beat me to it.”

Four minutes after that, he said, “All right, maybe we should try to find a garage with an open spot –”

“Newt, honey,” Aziraphale said. She only called him _honey_ when he was being especially stupid. “Why don’t you drop us off at the shop while you find a place to park? Crowley made it sound like there was some urgency.”

Newt circled back toward the shop, and they lucked out when they saw someone pulling out of a spot just a block away. Newt pounced on it like a hungry lion, and they were finally out of Dick Turpin and on their way into the bookshop.

“Crowley?” Newt called as they entered, just in case Crowley was lying in wait to shoot whoever came in the door or had rigged the place with booby traps. “It’s us.” The front part of the bookshop was empty. More accurately, it was full of books, but empty of angels or demons.

“In here,” they heard Crowley’s voice, coming from a back room.

“Sorry we’re a bit late,” Newt said as they entered the back room. “You know, parking is really tight in this neighborhood – oh.”

It was a cozy little room, filled with antique furniture and shelves and tables, all covered with yet more books, some of which looked as though they had been singed by fire. On the floor were two piles of foul-looking goo, which Newt didn’t want to investigate too closely. There were also random objects scattered about – the wire skeletons of two umbrellas, a pair of rubber gloves, a couple of tea towels, and several squirt guns. In the center of the tableau was a mattress, low on the floor, on which Crowley was lying with one of his massive black wings draped over what Newt assumed was Aziraphale.

Newt wondered if they had interrupted something.

Crowley glared up at them. “Well? Are you here to help or just to stand there gawking?”

“To help,” Anathema said smoothly. “Let me take a look at him.” She started toward the mattress, already getting out her magical first-aid kit.

“Wait,” Crowley said. “Turn around for a second. All three of you.”

“Why?” Newt asked, a bit wary of turning his back on a demon, even if said demon had slept on his sofa for two weeks.

Crowley glared even more. “He’s naked, all right?”

Newt again wondered if they had interrupted something.

“It doesn’t bother us,” Crowley went on. “We’re shameless. No shame. But I know you humans have plenty of shame – you’re welcome for that, by the way – so to avoid any awkwardness, just turn around for a second while I scrounge up a fig leaf or something.”

“Done and done,” Newt said as he, Anathema, and Adam all politely turned away.

“All right,” Crowley said a moment later. They turned back around to see that Crowley had withdrawn his wings and was sitting on the mattress next to Aziraphale, who was now covered from the waist down by a silk sheet that hadn’t existed a moment before. From the waist up, he looked so terrible that Anathema gasped and Newt felt like he might add his lunch to the disgusting pile of goo on the floor. Aziraphale looked like a piece of charred wood someone had pulled out of a campfire, and he was just as still.

“He’s alive?” Newt asked.

“For now,” Crowley snapped. “I’d like him to stay that way, so if I could get some help, please?”

Anathema dropped down next to Aziraphale with her magic supplies. Crowley stayed right where he was. Adam wandered around the room, examining the mysterious assortment of household objects with apparent interest while Dog sniffed at the puddles of goo. Newt stood in place awkwardly.

“What about, er, defenses?” he asked, trying to find a way to make a contribution to the proceedings. “Didn’t you say Heaven and Hell would be coming?”

“Not anymore,” Adam spoke up. “Me and Dog’ll keep ‘em away.”

“You can do that, Adam?” Newt asked. “I thought you couldn’t use your powers anymore?”

Adam shrugged. “Not for specific things, but I can still scare ‘em off. And Dog’s a good guard dog, too. There was a deer chewing up Mum’s flowerbeds last week, and Dog chased him away.”

“He’s right,” Crowley said. “Not about the dog, that dog’s bloody useless.” As if to confirm the point, Dog had gotten his head stuck inside one of the umbrella frames and was now dragging it around the room with him. “But he’s right about scaring off Above and Below. They’ll sense Adam’s aura and won’t dare to come within ten miles of this place.”

“Well, good,” Newt said, feeling that he had pulled his weight by getting that sorted out.

“Crowley, I’m afraid this isn’t looking good,” Anathema said as she dangled an amulet over Aziraphale. “These burns were made by very deep elemental magic. No ordinary medicine or spell can treat it.”

“So no hospital this time?” Newt asked. It had been his idea to take Crowley to the hospital the last time the angel and demon had come to them for help, which meant that he had pretty much saved Crowley’s life.

“No, no hospital,” Anathema said. “It’s not so much the injuries to his corporeal body that are the problem. His very angelic essence has been wounded. Look at his wings.” The wings had been almost completely consumed by the fire.

“So, he, um, needs those?” Newt asked.

Crowley once again fixed a glare that Newt would have found very intimidating if he hadn’t spent hours watching the demon making funny faces at Sage to get her to giggle. “Yes, he needs those. They’re what makes him who he is.”

“So they’re, what? Where his soul is?” Newt resigned himself to the fact that his contribution to the proceedings was to be the one asking stupid questions.

“We don’t have souls. That’s you lot. Human souls are the chips in the high-stakes poker game Above and Below have been playing since the start. Your souls are tied to your bodies until you die, then they float off to either Heaven or Hell depending on how naughty or nice you’ve been. But instead of souls, angels have a, what do you call it, ethereal essence. It’s not tied to their incorporations, which is why they can get disincorporated and still survive. But it can’t survive the destruction of the wings.”

“So we need to get him his wings back,” Newt clarified. He stopped, having had what he was sure was a brilliant idea. “Aren’t you supposed to ring a bell for that?”

Crowley just glared at him some more, his tolerance for stupid questions apparently exhausted.

“Since his wings were damaged by elemental magic, we need elemental magic to fix them,” Anathema said.

“Holy water helps,” Crowley said. “But we’re fresh out. We need loads more of it.”

“We can get more,” Anathema said. “But I don’t know if that will be enough. God gave angels their wings, right?”

“Right.” Crowley sounded as though he did not like where this was going.

“So it’s only God’s power that can restore them.”

“Well, that’s right out. Already tried giving the old bint a ring. Never did get back to me.”

“What about you, Adam?” Newt asked. “She’s your grandmother, isn’t she? Maybe She’ll respond to you?”

“Doubt it,” Adam said. “All She does is send me birthday cards and writes about how the aphids are after Her tomato plants again and how She doesn’t know what She was thinking when She created aphids.”

“Crowley, didn’t you and Aziraphale visit God last year?” Newt remembered something about that in the thank-you card Aziraphale had sent them. “Maybe She’ll be more responsive in person?”

“We don’t have time for that,” Crowley said, frustrated. “And Above and Below would set an ambush for us. And She’s already shown that She’s not going to lift a finger to help us anyway. We need something that doesn’t rely on God’s participation, and we need it now.”

“We don’t actually need God’s participation,” Anathema said thoughtfully. “We just need God’s power.”

“Relics,” Crowley said suddenly. “Toss me a Bible,” he added, clearly not willing to leave Aziraphale’s side for even a moment. The three of them looked around the room, and Crowley added impatiently, “Any one of them will do.”

Newt picked up the nearest book, which happened to be a very musty-smelling and ancient Bible, and handed it to Crowley. “Acts, I think it was,” Crowley said, leafing through the Bible like he was looking up a number in a phone directory. “They sure did like to go on, could have used an editor – here it is. _God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them_.”

“O-kay,” Newt said slowly. “So you’re saying we need to find a Kleenex that Paul blew his nose in, because it was imbued with God’s healing power?” Realizing that that was his stupidest question so far, Newt braced himself for another withering glare.

But Crowley nodded. “Basically. The kind of miracles Aziraphale and I can do are limited to the material plane. We can manipulate things in the earthly realm because we’re not part of it. Real miracles, things that take place in the ethereal plane, like restoring an angel’s wings, those can only be done by God. But sometimes God outsources Her miracle-doing to humans, and She transfers some of her power to them to do that.”

“Saints,” Newt said.

“Right. And that power can in turn be transferred to physical objects that the saint comes in contact with, like bogies on a Kleenex.”

“It should work with any relic, from any saint,” Anathema said. “I can do a standard healing spell, but with the relic as a catalyst, so that God’s power will be behind it.”

“Er, where do we get a relic?” Newt asked.

“They’re all over the place,” Crowley said. “In the old days, you couldn’t throw a rock without hitting a saint, and they left a trail of teeth and toenails behind them wherever they went.” He cast a wistful glance down at Aziraphale, as if reliving some fond memory.

“So where’s the nearest one?”

To answer that question, Crowley tossed the Bible aside and picked up his phone to consult the oracle of Google. “Looks like our best bet is Westminster Cathedral,” he said after a couple minutes. “Turns out they just got a bone fragment from Pope Clement I. It was found in a London rubbish tip, of all places. And hey, you can restock our holy-water supply while you’re there. One-stop shopping.”

“While _we’re_ there?” Newt repeated.

“I need to stay with Aziraphale,” Crowley said. “I’m sort of allergic to churches anyway. And Adam needs to stay here too, to hold off Above and Below. So that leaves you two.”

“I don’t think they’re likely to just _give_ us their sacred relic.”

“Of course not. You’ll have to steal it.”

“Um,” Newt said. He exchanged a look with Anathema. “I don’t know how comfortable I am stealing from a cathedral –”

“It’s the Roman Catholic Church, they’ve got it coming to them,” Crowley said dismissively. “Just think of it as karma for all they’ve done.”

“He’s got a point,” Anathema said. “Think of all the witches they’ve persecuted.”

“Don’t forget the Spanish Inquisition!” Adam gleefully contributed.

“And Galileo.”

“And the Crusades –”

“All right, fine,” Newt said. “Quite apart from the ethics of it, what about the logistics? I don’t know how to rob a cathedral, I’ve never even gotten a parking ticket.”***

“It’s just a simple heist,” Crowley said. “I’ll tell you what to do.”

“Does this all sound reasonable to you, Adam?” Anathema asked.

Adam, who had been kneeling on the floor freeing Dog from his umbrella prison, stood up. He was projecting that vague sense he sometimes gave off of not being entirely from the same reality as everyone else. “If everything goes as planned, Aziraphale’s wings should be restored,” he said. “But you still have to find him.”

“What do you mean, find him?” Crowley asked, worried. “He’s right here.”

Adam shook his head. “His incorporation is, and what’s left of his wings. But his ethereal essence couldn’t stay in wings that badly damaged for long. He’s wandering about.”

“Where?” Crowley sounded panicked now.

“I don’t know,” Adam said. “Somewhere on the ethereal plane, which means he could be anywhere in space or time. You have to find him, so that when his wings are restored his essence will be able to return to them.”

“How do I do that?”

Adam thought for a moment. “I can see how to do it. I think I can help you. But your essence will have to be set free from your wings too.”

“Well, do it then.” Crowley moved closer to Aziraphale.

“It’ll be dangerous. You might not find him. And even if you do, you might get lost and not be able to come back.”

“I’ll find him.” There was no doubt in Crowley’s voice.

“Um, before you go off to the ethereal plane,” Newt interrupted, “shouldn’t you tell us how we’re supposed to pull off this cathedral heist?”

“All right,” Crowley said. “I’ll get you two all set up and send you off, and while you’re gone, I’ll find Aziraphale. By the time you get back with the supplies, we’ll have his ethereal essence ready to reenter his wings as soon as you’ve done the spell to restore them. Then everything will be fine.” Newt wondered if he should point out that it wouldn’t necessarily be fine, as Crowley and Aziraphale would still be on the run from Heaven and Hell. But, to Crowley, _fine_ apparently began and ended with Aziraphale being alive and well.

“All right, gather round,” Crowley said impatiently. “It doesn’t matter what you’re trying to get away with. The same basic rules apply no matter what. Here’s how you pull off a successful heist.”

* * *

*Five mph above the speed limit. However, Dick Turpin was unsafe at any speed.

**Newt had once made an ill-advised attempt to install an after-market GPS in Dick Turpin, but it had started talking with the car’s onboard computer system in a cacophony of robot voices that sounded like they belonged in a Fifties SF movie. Anathema had threatened to leave him if he didn’t remove it.

***At that very moment, a parking enforcement officer was placing Newt’s first parking ticket on Dick Turpin’s windshield. Newt had been so excited to finally find a spot that he hadn’t noticed that it was for 15-minute parking only.


	7. Chapter 7

Newt and Anathema set off for Westminster Cathedral with rather less enthusiasm for their mission than Crowley would have liked to see. As soon as they were gone, Crowley turned to Adam, who was sitting on the floor next to the mattress, rubbing Dog’s belly.

“All right, then,” Crowley said. “Which way to the ethereal plane?”

Adam didn’t look up. “You should probably get back to how you were when we came in,” he said. “The thing you were doing with your wing. It’ll help if you’re close together like that.”

A bit reluctantly, Crowley lay back down on the mattress and spread his wing over Aziraphale again. It didn’t feel quite right sharing that intimacy while they had an audience, even if said audience was a bored-looking teenage former Antichrist and his dog.

“Now what?” Crowley asked.

“Are you ready? This is probably going to feel weird.”

“Yes, I’m ready, and what’s going to feel –”

Adam placed two fingers on Crowley’s forehead, and Crowley was off. He felt an uncomfortable out-of-body sensation like that of being disincorporated. But it was more like the world itself had been disincorporated. His consciousness was smeared out across every place he had ever been or imagined. He lost all sense of scale. He saw a million shining lights but couldn’t tell if they were stars or electrons. He heard the singing of the celestial spheres. Colors swirled around him that he had never seen before, stranger wavelengths than the ones visible to the eyes of his human incorporation or the infrared he could see as a snake. The colors shimmered like a pond that a rock had been tossed into. The doors of perception were flung open. Crowley had not tripped this hard since the third century, when he had taken ergot with Saint Anthony on the shores of the Red Sea in Egypt.*

Gradually, the scene got less psychedelic, and Crowley felt the whole vast expanse his consciousness had been occupying gradually narrowing down to a single point in space and time. He didn’t know where or when it was narrowing down to, but he knew that this was the point of space and time that he needed to be in. It was where Aziraphale was. He could feel the angel’s ethereal essence, could recognize it across the infinite reaches of the universe just as easily as he could recognize Aziraphale’s face or voice.

Eventually, the impossible colors swirling around Crowley faded into more subdued everyday hues, and they stopped swirling and solidified themselves into shapes. Rocks. Sky. Not a whole lot else. Crowley was on a mountaintop. Why was it always some forsaken mountaintop?

It was the old days, Crowley could tell. This was an Old Testament landscape. Things had just seemed larger than life back in those mythical times, the sky brighter, the mountains steeper. It was like the paint was still wet on the canvas, unfaded. In those times, God’s voice still boomed from the heavens, angels and demons freely walked the Earth, and humans stumbled around like newborn calves on trembling legs, blinking blearily at the new world that had been created for them.

Crowley found that he was in his body again, or what looked and felt like his body but had to be an illusion. He’d take it. Better than being formless.

He was standing near a large flat-topped boulder, perched on the mountain’s summit. And he wasn’t alone, or wouldn’t be for long. He could hear someone approaching. Humans. Crowley decided to hide until he figured out what was going on. There wasn’t much cover on the barren mountaintop, so he changed into his snake form and slithered off to the side where he wouldn’t be noticed.

Two humans reached the mountaintop. A man with a long grey beard, and a young boy.

“Why are we here, Father?” the boy asked.

The man had a terribly resolute look. “Lie down on the rock, Isaac,” he said.

There was fear in the boy’s face, but also trust in his father. He lay down on the rock, which suddenly looked like an altar. The man took rope and bound the boy’s wrists and ankles.

“Father?” the boy asked again, his voice trembling with fear.

The man’s expression was all hard edges, and his voice was just as hard as he said, “Close your eyes, son.”

The boy obeyed. The man, who Crowley realized must be Abraham, took out a long knife. It glinted in the sun as he raised it high above his head, pointing it toward his son’s heart.

“Wait!” Out of nowhere, there was a flash of white feathers as Aziraphale descended from the sky onto the mountaintop. “Stop, stop, put that knife away,” the angel said, grabbing Abraham’s knife-wielding wrist.

“God has commanded me to sacrifice my son,” Abraham protested. Eyes still closed, the bound boy started to cry silently.

“Right, and you passed the test,” Aziraphale said desperately. “Congratulations. Now that you have proven your devotion to the Almighty, there’s no need to go through with the actual sacrifice.”

Abraham looked down at his knife indecisively. “But we’ve come all this way. Got my knife sharpened and everything. Surely I need to sacrifice something?”

“Fine.” Aziraphale closed his eyes and reached out his hand experimentally. “Let’s see what’s nearby – ooh, a ram, that’s always a crowd-pleaser. Let me just bring it up here.” A ram, chewing placidly on a long stalk of grass in the neighboring lowlands, blinked in surprise at finding itself suddenly standing on a mountaintop.

Aziraphale touched Isaac’s shoulder, and the bindings fell away from the boy’s wrists and ankles. “Here you are, lad,” Aziraphale said, helping Isaac down from the makeshift altar. Then he boosted the ram up to take Isaac’s place. “Sorry about this,” he murmured to the ram, patting it apologetically.

Then Aziraphale turned to Abraham. “Go ahead, sacrifice away,” he said.

“Is that a good enough sacrifice?” Abraham asked, looking skeptically at the ram, which had adapted to its new station in life and was blissfully munching on its grass stalk.

“Of course, it’s a tip-top sacrifice. Just look at those horns. The Almighty will be most pleased with you.”

“All right then,” Abraham said dubiously. With a sudden lunge, he grabbed the ram by its horns, yanked its head backward, and cut its throat with the knife. A spectacular fountain of blood erupted, spraying Aziraphale and the two humans. Aziraphale winced and covered Isaac’s eyes with his hands.

The ram took so long to die, gurgling pathetically all the while, that Crowley briefly entertained the thought of slithering over and putting it out of its misery with a quick injection of venom. But he didn’t want to ruin the sacrifice. The suffering and blood were apparently an essential part of the whole process. The Almighty was a psychopath, like he had said.

“Well, that’s done then,” Aziraphale finally said when the ram had choked out its last rasping breath. “Nice sacrifice. On behalf of Heaven, I thank you. Now God commands you to take this boy home and have his mother make him a nice dinner, all right?”

“Bye,” Isaac said, and Aziraphale ruffled the boy’s hair. Abraham and Isaac took off down the mountain path.

Aziraphale withdrew his wings and then sank down to the ground, leaning against the altar. He looked like someone who was losing their faith.

“That kid’s going to need a lot of therapy,” Crowley said as he transformed from his snake form to his human form.

Aziraphale jumped, then relaxed when he saw who it was. “Oh, it’s you,” he said flatly. “Be gone, you foul serpent, back to the dark depths of the fiery pit where you were spawned.” He half-heartedly made some sort of hand gesture that Heaven’s upper management probably thought was effective in warding off demons.

Crowley frowned. Not only were they in Old Testament days, apparently this was Old Testament Aziraphale. Crowley had forgotten that, back then, Aziraphale had still followed company procedure and gone through the motions of trying to banish Crowley whenever they encountered each other.** He had never tried very hard, though, and now he was making an even more perfunctory effort than usual.

Crowley sat next to Aziraphale beneath the altar. “Rough day?” he asked in a companionable sort of way, like they were meeting at the pub. Aziraphale just grunted. It was strange to see him dressed in the old uniform of white robes rather than the tweedy professor look he would adopt in the twenty-first century. The white robes were now covered in dark red ram’s blood.

Without even thinking, Crowley waved his hand over Aziraphale’s shoulder, and the bloodstains disappeared. Aziraphale looked down in surprise. “I could have done that,” he said.

“Yes, but you’d always know the stains were there.”

Aziraphale looked even more surprised. “You’re right.” He was clearly about to say thank you, but then remembered who he was talking to, and ended up just awkwardly clearing his throat instead.

After a moment, Crowley said, “You went off script, didn’t you? You weren’t supposed to save that boy.”

“Heaven’s internal affairs are no concern of yours.” Aziraphale scowled. “Anyway, it’s not as though the sacrifice was needed. Isn’t it enough to be willing to sacrifice? Once you’ve decided to do it, the actual sacrifice itself is rather beside the point, isn’t it?”

“Makes sense to me.”

At that, Aziraphale buried his head in his hands. “Well, if it makes sense to _you_ , I must have done the wrong thing again.”

“You never do the wrong thing.”

Aziraphale raised his head to glare at him. “You said something like that to me, back in the Garden. That it’s not possible for me to do evil. You were being sarcastic. I didn’t know what sarcasm was then because that was the first time I’d heard it***, but I do now.”

“No, I mean it.” Crowley wished that they were in the post-Arrangement years. He didn’t want to be in a time when Aziraphale couldn’t believe that Crowley was being sincere. _His_ Aziraphale could always see through the sarcasm and cynicism to Crowley’s underlying sincerity. “You always do the right thing,” Crowley went on, trying to make _this_ Aziraphale understand.

“You don’t even know me,” Aziraphale said, his face closed off.

“Yes, I do.” Crowley hated this. When Adam had said that Aziraphale could be anywhere in space or time, Crowley had assumed that it would be the modern-day version of Aziraphale. He hadn’t been expecting that the angel would have regressed into the version of himself he had been at the time. He hadn’t been prepared for Aziraphale to see him as the enemy. It was unexpectedly painful, being with an Aziraphale who wouldn’t meet his eyes, who said they didn’t know each other, who wouldn’t accept a word of kindness or comfort from him. That was the last thing Crowley needed right now, when Aziraphale’s burned body and broken wings were all he had left of him on the material plane. He needed to be with Aziraphale now on the ethereal plane, so he could reassure himself that the angel was still there and would be coming back with him.

Aziraphale stood up, his pristine white robes billowing majestically around him in the mountain breeze. “I’m leaving now. Don’t follow me.” He took off into the air, graceful as an eagle, and Crowley followed him.

* * *

*While tripping on ergot, Crowley had become convinced that he was a centaur, and so he appeared as a centaur to old Anthony. The vision had terrified Anthony, who had run out into the desert. Then Anthony had come across Aziraphale, who had been tracking Crowley through the desert to see what fiendish deeds he was getting up to. To the tripping Anthony, Aziraphale had appeared as a satyr. Aziraphale had, of course, been very kind to Anthony, giving him fruit and talking him through his bad trip. Crowley, meanwhile, was enjoying being a centaur and found that he quite liked galloping. That day was by far the most fun he had had in the third century, so he had honored the old coot by choosing Anthony for his human name centuries later.

**Once, when he encountered Aziraphale while walking through the streets of Alexandria, Crowley had pretended that the angel’s banishing attempt had worked, ducking behind a column while Aziraphale wasn’t looking. Aziraphale had first looked stunned that it had finally worked after the five thousandth time, then dejected that he was now standing alone on the street with no one to talk to. When Crowley had popped back out from behind the column, it was the first time Aziraphale had been unable to hide a smile upon seeing him, and the last time he had tried to banish him.

***It didn’t take long for sarcasm to catch on. Even the Old Testament Israelites often said things like, “Oh, we’re _so_ lucky to be the chosen people. We have _such_ a just and loving God.”


	8. Chapter 8

As Crowley pursued Aziraphale through the air, the sky above and mountains below shifted and compressed, once again exploding into swirls of color in the visual equivalent of a Grateful Dead jam. Crowley assumed that meant that they were moving to a different point in the spacetime continuum. He hoped that this point in the spacetime continuum would have a bar in it.

The world once again solidified into recognizable shapes. He was in a city. He could tell it was an ancient one, even before he could see the dusty and donkey-thronged streets, based on the smell alone. Ancient civilizations had an unmistakable odor of human and animal waste, woodsmoke, and body odor. In this case, the smell was exacerbated because it was baking in a hot subtropical sun. More details gradually swam into view. Palm trees. Temples. Off in the distance, pyramids. Egypt, then. This was Memphis. Crowley recognized it by the absurdly large statue of Rameses II and the stepped pyramid he could see off on the horizon, sticking out above the ramshackle collection of buildings that served as downtown Memphis, on the banks of the Nile.

Crowley frowned as he took in the condition the Nile was in. Ancient civilizations had not been great at managing their water quality*, but the river was looking pretty bad even by the standards of the time. For instance, the water was red with blood. Dead fish were floating on its surface, which wasn’t helping with the overall aroma of the place. The frogs seemed not to be bothered by the fact that their habitat had been turned to blood, though. There were millions of them in the river, riding the dead fish like rafts, and millions more hopping up the bank toward the city, intent on some nefarious mission.** Crowley looked down and saw frogs grimly hopping around his feet. He was tempted to transform into his snake form and eat some of them, just as a public service, but he wasn’t really hungry.

“Well, at least the sun’s finally out again,” Crowley overheard one man say to another. The speaker, who was covered in hideous boils, was cheerily shoveling frogs off his front step into a clay pot that served as a rubbish bin. Not taking the hint, the frogs were hopping right back out as fast as they went in. “Those three days of darkness were a bit disconcerting, eh? And that thunderstorm of hail and fire, have you ever seen anything like that? And then that plague of locusts on top of everything else. Strange weather we’ve been having lately.”

“You’re telling me,” said the man’s interlocutor, who was also covered in hideous boils and was busy combing lice out of the coat of a camel that looked like it was slowly being driven mad from the itching and the flies buzzing around its head. “Almost makes you wonder if we’re being punished for something.” He and the first man laughed nervously.

So this was the Plagues of Egypt. Crowley couldn’t remember where he had been when all that unpleasantness was going on, but if he knew himself, it was most likely as far from Egypt as possible.*** Plagues were not really his scene.

Crowley went off through the streets of Memphis to try to find Aziraphale. As he walked, he became aware of a rather distressing sound that had been in the background all the time he had been in Memphis, which was becoming more audible as he entered the more residential areas of the city. It was a great wailing, a primal, wordless cry. That was when he remembered that the tenth and most terrible Plague had been the killing of all the firstborn sons in Egypt. He was hearing the wails of the grieving families.

Rounding a corner, Crowley came face-to-face with Aziraphale. “Did you do this?” the angel demanded of him. He hadn’t even gone through his demon-banishment routine first, a sign of how distressed he was.

“No,” Crowley said. “Hello to you too, by the way. And you know I didn’t do this. The Egyptians enslaved _your_ side’s chosen people.”

“It’s the Pharaoh who’s enslaving them,” Aziraphale said, looking even more upset. “It was Pharaoh who commanded all newborn boys to be thrown into the Nile, and he was the one who refused to let the Israelites go. It’s not like this is a democracy. Many of the Egyptians are slaves themselves. They are oppressed, not the oppressors. Why should all of them have to suffer? Why should they go hungry with their crops destroyed by hail and locusts, and go thirsty with their river turned to blood? Why should they all lose their firstborn sons?”

“All good questions. If I were to ask them, I think the answer you would give starts with ‘in’ and rhymes with ‘preferable.’” Crowley frowned and replayed the word’s sound in his head. “Well, almost rhymes.”

Aziraphale shook his head. “You’re wrong. My side wouldn’t do this.”

“Aziraphale.” Crowley gently took the angel by the arm and guided him to one house that had a red mark above its door. “What is that?”

“Lamb’s blood. The Almighty commanded Moses to tell the Israelites to leave that mark above their doors last night.”

“Why?”

Aziraphale’s face crumpled in realization. “So that the homes of the Israelites could be distinguished from those of the Egyptians. And last night was when the Tenth Plague went through, killing all the firstborns of the Egyptians but passing over the Israelites. You’re right. The Almighty did this.”

Aziraphale sat dejectedly on a low stone wall, and Crowley joined him.

“You know your side isn’t any better than mine,” Crowley said. “I know you already know that. And, wow, will you get to know it even better over the next few millennia.”

“We are better,” Aziraphale mumbled. “We have divine righteousness.”

“You don’t believe that. You’re too clever to fall for Heaven’s propaganda.” Crowley found himself getting restless. He didn’t want to spend his time rehashing arguments he and Aziraphale had had a million times, arguments that had been settled by the Almost-Apocalypse. He wanted to be with _his_ Aziraphale, and he wanted to be with him somewhere other than a plague-ravaged ancient city. Somewhere they could get a good drink and talk about something other than dead children. “Could we change the channel on this particular frequency of the ethereal realm? See what else is on?”

“What are you talking about?” Aziraphale clearly still had no idea what was going on. He thought they were the angel and demon of old, circa Exodus, adversaries in the eternal struggle between good and evil.

“Never mind. Go on, tell me more about this divine righteousness. Sounds to me like what Gandhi said about western civilization.”

“Who’s Gandhi? One of your operatives?”

“Hardly. He was your kind of chap. Or will be, whatever. You’ll like him. Anyway, the question you should be asking is what did he say about western civilization.”

“What did he say about western civilization?” Aziraphale looked a little less depressed now.

“That he thought it would be a good idea. That’s like divine righteousness. It would be a good idea.”

Crowley resigned himself to playing along with the historical versions of Aziraphale. He didn’t know the exact mechanism by which he was supposed to bring Aziraphale back from the ethereal realm, but he had a feeling that, unpleasant as they were, these moments were not selected at random. For now, at least he was here with Aziraphale, or some version of him, and that meant that even this smelly, froggy, long-dead city was better than the real world.

* * *

*This is something that modern civilizations are also not great at, but without the excuse ancient civilizations could claim of ignorance of the germ theory of disease.

**One might reasonably ask why frogs were sent as a plague, as frogs are generally harmless and even rather likable creatures. The answer is that it doesn’t matter what the animal is. If there are enough of them, it’s a plague. There is probably some formula based on the animal’s body size and diet and style of locomotion to determine the minimum number needed to constitute a plague, but bio-theologists have yet to work this out. It doesn’t really matter, though, because this is a classic example of “you know it when you see it.” Anyone standing on the banks of the Nile in Memphis that day would have said, “Hey, it’s a plague of frogs.”

***As it happens, he had been drinking his way across Greece. Now there was a civilization that had known how to enjoy itself.


	9. Chapter 9

A common trope of heist movies is a sequence like this: the leader of the crew narrates each step of the plan over scenes of how the operation is supposed to go. If this were a heist movie, this would be that part of it.

“The most important part of evildoing,” Crowley had told Newt and Anathema, “is to be completely confident about it. You walk into that cathedral like you own the damn place and it’s your God-given right to take whatever you please. Anyone who sees you stroll in there, taking your sweet time, head held high, they won’t question you because they’ll think you must know what you’re doing. That’s the best outcome, that no one even tries to stop you.”

This would be said over slow-motion footage of Newt and Anathema throwing open the double doors of Westminster Cathedral and striding up the aisle, with Elvis Presley’s “A Little Less Conversation” playing in the background.*

“My second piece of advice,” Crowley had added, “is to visualize the successful achievement of your goal. Don’t think about what might go wrong, don’t have any continency plans in place. Just assume that everything will go off without a hitch. Think of it as walking into the corner shop to pick up some milk. When you go in, you are expecting to come out with the milk. You do not have a contingency plan. If anyone were to stop you and question your motives and try to prevent you from obtaining your milk, your confusion and outrage would be genuine. It’s the same thing here. You are walking into the cathedral to pick up the sacred relic of Pope Clement I and a few gallons of holy water, and you will be genuinely confused and outraged if anyone tries to stop you. So that’s the second-best outcome, that someone tries to stop you, but you end up convincing them that _they’re_ in the wrong.”

Cut to Newt and Anathema casually picking up the relic and filling some plastic jugs from the cathedral’s holy water font while a priest looks on, shrugging helplessly.

“Finally,” Crowley had said, “if all else fails, you can resort to doing something unexpected. Again, don’t plan it out in advance, because then it’s not unexpected. You need to surprise everyone, including yourselves. When you act in a predictable way, you can easily be outmaneuvered. But when you do something unexpected, they won’t be ready for it. Erratic behavior is your last line of defense.”

The sequence would end with Anathema riding a motorcycle back down the aisle of the cathedral, Newt clinging to her back, their holy loot in his arms. The motorcycle would burst out of the double doors and bounce down the steps of the cathedral as “A Little Less Conversation” ends.

“That’s it?” Newt had asked in the bookshop after Crowley finished his exposition**. “Shouldn’t we go in with some sort of plan?”

“No, no. Plans are dangerous, too much can go wrong. Much better to go in without a plan, that way everything goes according to it, no matter what. Now off you go.”

Newt and Anathema left the bookshop, still a bit unclear on what they were doing, but reassured by Crowley that that was a good thing. They walked back to Dick Turpin and got in.

“Hey, is that a parking ticket?” Newt asked, seeing a piece of paper under the windshield wiper. He got out and retrieved it.***

“We don’t have time for that now,” Anathema said. “We need to get to the cathedral quickly. I don’t know how long Aziraphale has.”

“Do you think this will work?” Newt asked as he moved Dick Turpin back out into the flow of traffic.

“I don’t know. Even if we get the supplies, and the healing spell works, and Crowley finds Aziraphale on the ethereal plane, there’s still the small matter of Heaven and Hell being after them. I doubt Adam can hold them off indefinitely, and even if he could, he can’t stay in that bookshop forever. He’s got school on Monday.”

“Well, I suppose Aziraphale and Crowley could come back with us back to Tadfield.”

“And stay with us again.” They both grimly contemplated that for a moment. “Anyway,” Anathema continued, “I don’t think they’ll even be safe in Tadfield for long. The village might be shielded from detection by occult and ethereal forces, but eventually Heaven and Hell will figure it out. They’ll realize that Aziraphale and Crowley were working with human allies and that it had to have been us, if nothing else because they’re detecting Adam’s aura here.”

“Um, should we be worried about that?”

“Maybe. I hope Crowley’s right that Heaven and Hell don’t care about humans one way or another.”

“Well, there’s a cheerful thought.”

They arrived at Westminster Cathedral, realized there was nowhere to park, spent ten frustrating minutes looking for somewhere to park, and finally found a spot a few blocks away. Crowley had manifested four empty plastic gallon jugs for them, which they got out of Dick Turpin’s boot and carried with them.

“So what’s the plan?” Newt asked as they approached the cathedral.

“Uh-uh,” Anathema said. “You remember what Crowley said. The plan is we go in and pick up the relic, fill these jugs with holy water, and walk back out. Just like picking up milk from the corner shop.”

“Yes, but where do they keep the relic? Do we even know what it looks like? What if –”

“Hush. Visualize the successful achievement of our goal.”

“Wait.” As they went up the steps toward the cathedral’s double doors, Newt stopped Anathema with a hand on her arm. “Do you hear music?”

There was indeed music coming from inside the cathedral. With a sense of foreboding, they pushed the doors open. The Saturday evening mass was in progress, choir and pipe organ harmonizing away in praise of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit, pews crowded with worshippers. Newt and Anathema looked at each other, wondering if maybe their plan should have included checking the cathedral’s schedule of services before setting out.

* * *

*The electronic remix, not the original.

**This easy three-step method for getting away with things was one that Crowley had perfected over his millennia of careful observation of human behavior. He had briefly considered writing a how-to guide but had decided it was not in his best interest to give away all his secrets.

***Newt was proud that he had finally gotten his first parking ticket. It made him feel like a man.


	10. Chapter 10

The world made another psychedelic lurch, which didn’t even faze Crowley this time. He was getting used to it. He looked around to take in his new surroundings. It was another city, still in the ancient world by the smell of it. Now it was cooler, and dark, with the majesty of the star-studded heavens spanning the desert sky.

But there was still wailing in the air. At first, Crowley thought it was some sort of echo of the wailing of the Egyptian mothers, carried with him across space and time. But no, he recognized where he was, and when. He had been here, on this night. Bethlehem, circa 4 BC. He was now hearing the cries of the mothers of Bethlehem, whose male infants had just been massacred by King Herod. The cries were that same languageless grief as he had just heard in Memphis, rhyming across the intervening four millennia of human history, reverberating into the many nights in the future that would also ring with those same cries.

Crowley wished that Aziraphale’s ethereal essence was not so preoccupied with dead children. He knew that this particular massacre had haunted the angel up through the twenty-first century. Aziraphale had gotten drunk and cried about it just the year before while they were in Cologne. But at least, this time, Crowley had been there for it the first time around, so he knew what to do.

Crowley set off for the town’s central square, where he knew he would find Aziraphale standing, looking lost. Crowley went up to him. He remembered that, when this had really happened on the material plane, he had been about to say something snide about how Aziraphale was meant to be off with the rest of the heavenly host singing _Gloria in excelsis deo_ over the birth of the Messiah*, but he had shut up when he saw the depth of the angel’s grief. At the time, Crowley had told himself it was because there was no sense in kicking the enemy when he was down. No challenge and no fun in that. But now, in retrospect, Crowley could see that it had been because, even back then, he had hated seeing that look of pain in Aziraphale’s big blue eyes.

So now Crowley did something he hadn’t done the first time around. He squeezed Aziraphale’s shoulder and said, “I’m sorry.”

Aziraphale blinked in surprise. The sincerity was so clear in Crowley’s voice that, for once, the angel didn’t even question it. “It was my fault,” Aziraphale said. He hadn’t said that the first time, he had just nattered on about the ineffable plan and martyrs and special places in Heaven, trying to convince himself of the truth of his own words. Apparently, the unexpected comfort Crowley was offering this time had opened Aziraphale up to saying how he really felt.

“No, it wasn’t,” Crowley said, keeping his hand on Aziraphale’s shoulder.

“It was. I told the Magi not to report back to Herod on the identity of the Anointed One –”

“You did the right thing. You were trying to save a child. I told you before, you always do the right thing.”

Aziraphale’s eyes filled with tears. “You’re a demon. What do you know about what’s right?”

“I know you.”

“Why are you being kind to me?”

“Hey, no need to be insulting.”

Aziraphale wiped away his tears. “You’re not like other demons.”

“Of course not. I’m smarter, more imaginative, with a much better sense of style –”

“You’re good.” Aziraphale sounded surprised, as he should be. In the real world, that was an accusation he hadn’t started making until centuries later. “Deep down inside, you’re good.”

“Want to see about that?” Crowley grinned. “I’m on my way to Rome. Got some major evil brewing there. Has to do with that census thing they’re working on**. If you want to have a go at thwarting my wiles, you’d better follow me.” That was all Crowley had said, back when this had really happened. That was the only way he could comfort Aziraphale back then, through the guise of an enemy.

Aziraphale smiled gratefully, just as he had back in the earthly realm, and said, “You don’t stand a chance, you old serpent.”

Crowley took off into the air, and this time it was Aziraphale who followed him.

* * *

*It was quite the show. Some of the more enterprising local shepherds had started selling t-shirts.

**In the end, the best census-related evil Crowley had been able to come up with was to stand behind the enumerator and say random numbers to make him lose his count and have to start over. It was a simpler time. It wasn’t until the invention of computers that mass production of low-grade evil became possible.


	11. Chapter 11

Although Crowley was flying in the lead with Aziraphale in pursuit, he felt that he was the one following Aziraphale, or maybe they were orbiting each other. Crowley sighed in disappointment as he felt the now-familiar spacetime jump. He had been hoping that they would make it to Rome. They could have at least gotten a decent glass of wine there.

As his new surroundings sharpened, Crowley could sense that they were out of Biblical times. He didn’t know what it was, exactly, that gave it away. There was just something in the air suggesting that this was a world made by humans, a world weary of miracles. The smell hadn’t improved, though.

Crowley found himself standing next to a city wall, in the smoking aftermath of a great battle. Riderless horses wandered around, and the cries of wounded men filled the air. Many other men, clad in chainmail emblazoned with a red cross, lay dead on the blood-soaked ground. Fallen ladders radiated out from the city walls, their would-be scalers lying broken beneath them. Scattered about were boulders, with arms and legs sticking out from underneath, courtesy of the trebuchet inside the city walls. A massive siege tower loomed overhead. Next to the splintered city gates, a battering ram lay in repose, satisfied at a job well done.

Crowley recognized this scene as another familiar place and time. The Crusades. The first one, if he wasn’t mistaken. There had been so many of them, they had all blurred together after a while. But he definitely remembered this battle. The Siege of Jerusalem, 1099, when the Franks had succeeded in taking the Holy City from the Fatimid Caliphate. He also remembered, in vivid detail that had haunted his nightmares for centuries, what had happened immediately after this battle. He needed to find Aziraphale right away.

Crowley made his way toward the broken-down city gates, trying not to step on anything dead along the way. He pushed through the crowds that had bottlenecked around the gate, entering the city, and made a beeline for the shining gold dome of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Inside the beautifully columned space of the mosque, men, women, and children in Muslim garb were lined up against the walls, held at swordpoint by Crusaders. The only sounds were the crying of the children and the occasional wet thunk of a sword being driven into a human body. The iron smell of blood was already tanging the air. By the time the day was through, anyone left standing in the mosque would be up to their ankles in it.

Crowley hurried past the prisoners waiting their turn to die. He didn’t want to look at their faces. They weren’t really here, he told himself. These were the ghosts of people who had died almost a thousand years ago. But he could still feel their eyes on him. He hadn’t lifted a finger to help them when he had really been in this place. But he knew who had.

In the chapel beneath the dome, Crowley found Aziraphale. A couple of the larger and meaner Crusaders had him in their grip.

“You’ve already won,” Aziraphale was saying. “You’ve taken the Holy City. There’s no need to kill anyone else.”

“They’re pagans,” one of the Crusaders said dismissively.

“You all worship the same God, don’t you see that?” Aziraphale then caught sight of Crowley, and a look of cautious hope came into his face. Hope, because this was after they had come to their Arrangement, so Aziraphale had reasonable expectations that he would find an ally in Crowley. But also caution, because the Arrangement was still new, and Crowley had not yet proved his trustworthiness. “Crowley,” Aziraphale said. “You have to help me stop them. They’re planning to kill everyone in the city. That’s forty thousand people.”

“I know,” Crowley said. Forty thousand was an impressive body count by the standards of the time. No bombs, no machine guns, just stabbing forty thousand bodies, one by one. That took dedication. “Come on, angel,” Crowley said, just as he had after the real Siege of Jerusalem. “Let’s get out of here.”

“No, I can’t let them do it.”

“There’s nothing we can do. This operation is sanctioned by Heaven.”

“That can’t be right. I must have missed a memo or something. They can’t expect me to just stand by and watch a whole city be massacred in Heaven’s name.”

“What was it your Pope said in his appeal? Whoever for devotion sets out to liberate the Church of God in Jerusalem, this act will count for all his penance?”

“Jerusalem is already liberated.”

“Not until it has been cleansed of the pagans,” the Crusader chimed in.

“At least let the women and children go,” Aziraphale pleaded of the man.

“All pagans in the holy city must be put to death,” the Crusader said.

“I don’t think you’re going to get very far arguing with this lot,” Crowley said to Aziraphale. “Come on, miracle yourself out of this brute’s grip, and we’ll go find somewhere a bit more civilized for dinner. I hear Florence is nice these days*.”

Aziraphale shook his head. “I can’t leave these people to die. I have to stop it, one way or another.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Crowley snapped. “Your superiors want a bloodbath. If they don’t get one here, they’ll take it out on you.”

“Then so be it,” Aziraphale said. A potentiality was building up in the air, like hair standing on end right before lightning strikes. Crowley recognized it as Aziraphale charging up his heavenly powers for a major miracle. Beating all the Crusaders’ swords into plowshares** or something like that, no doubt. That was the kind of miracle that would, at a minimum, result in Heaven confiscating Aziraphale’s incorporation and banning him from Earth. At worst, Heaven might take more severe and final personnel action against Aziraphale. That was why, at this point in the proceedings nearly a thousand years ago, when they had been having this argument in Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque and Crowley could feel that the angel’s loving, selfless, stupid miracle was about to take place, Crowley had grabbed a sword from a Crusader and beheaded Aziraphale.

That had been the first and only time that Crowley had disincorporated Aziraphale. He had known that it was the right thing to do, the only thing he could do. If he had allowed Aziraphale to save the innocents of Jerusalem, Aziraphale would have faced terrible punishment from Heaven. If, on the other hand, Aziraphale was disincorporated by the Enemy, Heaven would just consider that part of the cost of doing business, and they would issue him a new incorporation and send him back to Earth after the requisite paperwork was processed. So there really hadn’t been a choice at all. Crowley had gone for a beheading so that it would be quick and painless. But he had still immediately felt ill about what he had just done. He had thrown down the sword, unable to look at the results of his work, and fled the mosque and Jerusalem and the Holy Land. He had ended up in Florence after all and drank himself into oblivion to try to forget all about the sickening feeling of the sword in his hand, dripping with Aziraphale’s blood. That was where the newly reincorporated Aziraphale had found him, still drunk, several weeks later. Aziraphale had been furious, of course. Crowley had tried to explain why he had done it, but he hadn’t been good at explaining things like that in those days, and Aziraphale wouldn’t listen. That had nearly been the end of the Arrangement. Aziraphale had avoided him for most of the next three hundred years, as if the fourteenth century wasn’t bad enough already. It wasn’t until the Renaissance that Aziraphale had finally forgiven him and they had renormalized relations.***

Now, on the ethereal plane, there was no way Crowley would even consider repeating the drastic action he had taken in the real world. It didn’t matter now if Aziraphale miraculously saved the people of Jerusalem, because this whole world was imaginary and there would be no consequences. But even if there had been, Crowley doubted he would have been able to make himself behead Aziraphale again. Once was more than enough, thank you very much.

So now, Crowley just said, “All right, angel. Let’s see what you’ve got.” The air was suffused with a golden glow emanating from Aziraphale, and all the swords in the mosque became liquid like quicksilver and fell from the Crusaders’ hands into puddles on the bloodied floor.

“It is a sign from God,” one of the Crusaders cried. All the Crusaders fell to their knees in reverence, and the prisoners of war wisely started hightailing it out of the city before God had a change of heart.

It was a beautiful sight to see, living people – old men, mothers with children, young couples – who in the real world had been only corpses. As the mosque faded away for another spacetime jump, Crowley found himself wishing that it had really happened that way.

* * *

*Florence had recently eclipsed Pisa as the city-state where all the cool people hung out.

**It takes more beating than you would think to turn a sword into a plowshare.

***Aziraphale had been in an especially good mood during the Renaissance. It was his kind of age.


	12. Chapter 12

In heist movies, after the sequence depicting how the operation is supposed to go, there is a second, usually rather longer, part of the movie showing how it actually goes. Unless you are watching an especially dull movie, the second part is usually different from the first, i.e. the operation does not go exactly as planned. If this were a heist movie, this would be that second part.

Upon seeing that the cathedral was full of worshippers who might be expected to impede the successful completion of Newt and Anathema’s goal, Newt expressed his feelings on the matter with a succinct, “God _damn_ it.” An elderly woman sitting in the last row of pews turned and glared at him. Newt quickly said “Sorry,” and, in deference to his surroundings, amended his assessment of the situation to, “ _Fuck_.” The woman was still glaring. Anathema had the presence of mind to dip her fingers into the stoup of holy water by the entrance, held by a marble statue of an angel, and use it to make the sign of the cross, hoping she was doing it correctly. Newt followed suit, and by unspoken consensus the two of them filed into the cathedral and sat in an empty pew in the last row. Resigned to go undercover as Catholic worshippers, they cast their eyes down in a guilty and penitent way, which was an easy posture to adopt with the woman still glaring at them from across the aisle.

Newt and Anathema piled their gallon jugs into the space between them on the bench, willing themselves to believe that those were normal objects to bring along to Mass so that everyone else would believe it too. “What now?” Newt whispered.

“This is a good thing,” Anathema said. “It gives us an opportunity to case the joint. We already know where the holy water is –” she jerked her head toward the stoup at the door where they had anointed themselves – “and now we can look around and try to spot the relic. Then, whenever this thing finally ends and people start leaving, we can use the distraction to grab the stuff.”

“There wasn’t enough holy water there to fill a teacup,” Newt said doubtfully. “Stingy bastards. We’re going to need way more of it.”

“Well, we can find where they keep the bulk supplies while we’re at it. Stop trying to think so far ahead and just look around for the relic. But try not to look like you’re looking around.”

The choir had now finished, and the priest was going on about the nature of sin. Newt half-listened to the homily as he glanced around the cathedral’s nave, hoping maybe he would pick up some tips on how to sin more effectively. “Maybe that’s it up there?” Newt asked, nudging Anathema. There was a case by the altar, near where the priest stood. Newt couldn’t see what was inside the case, but it had a promisingly relic-y look about it.

“Could be,” Anathema said, squinting as though she were trying to get a better look at the divine truth the priest was expositing upon.

After some time, the priest held up a communion wafer and a chalice and announced, “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world. Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb.” Newt’s stomach rumbled as he thought of braised lamb chops. It was getting close to suppertime.

Anathema hit his shoulder, and he belatedly stood with the rest of the congregation. “Lord,” the congregants intoned, “I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.” Newt and Anathema lip-synced along as if they knew the words.

A queue began to form in the aisle. “Looks like this is the main event,” Newt said.

Anathema stared at the queue. “Go take Communion,” she said urgently.

“What? I can’t. To take Communion, you have to be a Catholic in the state of grace. I’m not Catholic, and I’m not sure what state I’m in, but I’m pretty sure it’s nowhere near grace.”*

“We need to get a better look at that case, see if the relic is inside.”

“My family is Protestant. As Protestant as it gets. Remember my Puritan ancestors? Old great-great-great-great grandad Thou-Shalt-Not-Commit Adultery? You do it.”

Anathema stared at him. “I’m a witch. Remember _my_ ancestors?”

“All right, fair enough.” Newt wavered indecisively. “It’s blasphemy. I’ll go to Hell.”

“That’s where all the interesting people go.” Anathema gave him a little push, and Newt reluctantly joined the queue.

As he shuffled forward, he kept an eye on the congregants ahead of him to see what they were doing so he could replicate it. It was like being in a wedding, sure that he was going to mess up his part and cause great public embarrassment for everyone.** When he reached the front of the queue, he knelt in front of the priest, who said, “Body of Christ,” and put a communion wafer in Newt’s mouth. The Body of Christ tasted like the cardboard inside a container of boxed wine.

As he circulated around the front of the cathedral back toward the pews, Newt walked right by the glass case he had been eying up and got a good look inside. Sure enough, it contained an assortment of sacred-looking objects, one of which was a small oval metal reliquary, lined with red silk damask, with a bone fragment that might have been part of a finger visible through its glass cover. Inscribed on the reliquary were the words _Ex Oss San Clementis PM_. As a bonus, Newt also noticed that there was a baptismal font at the front of the cathedral that looked to hold a larger volume of holy water than the stoup at the entrance. One-stop shopping indeed.

“Well?” Anathema said as Newt returned to their pew.

“That’s it,” Newt confirmed. “They’ve got more holy water up there too.”

“Jackpot. It looks like they’re wrapping things up here. Get ready, this will be our chance.”

The priest offered a short concluding prayer, then there was a great rustle of movement and chatter as the congregants started making their way down the center aisle like children dismissed from school. Newt and Anathema went up the side aisle, out of the main flow of traffic, striding with as much casual confidence as they could muster. The priest had moved down to the exit to see off his congregants individually, and Newt and Anathema were hidden from his view by the throngs of departing worshippers.

“All right, now what?” Newt whispered as they stood in front of the case.

“Now we pick up the milk,” Anathema said boldly. The case was locked, which Newt thought showed a distinct lack of faith on the cathedral’s part, but Anathema made quick work of the lock with a whispered spell. She grabbed the reliquary, slipped it into her pocketbook, hastily rearranged some of the ornate crosses and chalices remaining in the case so it wouldn’t be as obvious that something was missing, and re-locked the case. Newt cringed, expecting a bolt from the blue to strike them down immediately, but nothing happened.

“Now for the holy water,” Anathema said, confidently striding over to the baptismal font with their gallon jugs.

“Can I help you, my children?”

Newt and Anathema both jumped at the voice. It was the priest. The congregants had all departed more quickly than Newt had been expecting***. Now Newt and Anathema were starkly, guiltily exposed in the empty cathedral, and the priest had come up behind them and was regarding them with a mildly quizzical look.

So they had failed to achieve the ideal outcome of getting in and out unnoticed with no one trying to stop them. It was time to move onto Step 2, talking their way out of the situation.

* * *

*In fact, the state Newt was in was that of the lost blind wretch narrating “Amazing Grace”, pre-grace. Also known as the human condition.

**This feeling is known to social psychologists by the term “proactive embarrassment.” It's thought to have some evolutionary advantage. 

***This was because they had finished their tedious worshipping and were now ready to get on with their Saturday night plans.


	13. Chapter 13

Crowley’s next destination was smellier than all the others combined. It smelled, he realized with sickening recognition, like the fourteenth century. That is to say, it smelled like death. Not the sanitized and clinical death of the twenty-first century, but oozing, rotting, rat-nibbled medieval death.* He started choking on the stench, remembered that he didn’t actually need to breathe, and decided he was done breathing for the foreseeable future.

He was in a medieval city. Could have been London, could have been anywhere in Europe. It didn’t matter, because this was the Black Death, and it had all of Europe in its skeletal grip. A great pit had been dug into the city square, and men were arriving with wheelbarrows full of dead bodies, tipping them over into the mass grave. The dead skin of the corpses was covered in swollen buboes and mottled with gangrene. The stench was coming only partially from the dead. It also came from the windows of the nearby homes where the still-living were burning with fever, vomiting blood, the flesh rotting on their bodies in a preview of the decomposition that awaited them once their limbs intertwined in the danse macabre of the mass grave. Plague was in the very soil. Its miasma thickened the air.

The sights and smells alone were enough to make Crowley feel feverish and nauseated himself, even though as a demon he was immune to human maladies. He also felt unaccountably itchy, imagining the bites of _Y. pestis_ -infected fleas that must be roaming the city like a herd of miniature fanged wildebeest. Why, of all the times in history, had Aziraphale brought him back to the fourteenth century? He had only recently started to feel a comfortable distance from it. Back in the actual fourteenth century, he had laid low as much as possible, so he wouldn’t have to see too much of, well, this. Just to add insult to injury, Aziraphale had still been cross with him about the disincorporation in Jerusalem. But now, on the ethereal plane, Crowley resolved to find Aziraphale and try to convince him that the spacetime continuum had better attractions than this.

Sighing, he started wandering the streets, inhabited only by the dead and the gravediggers, looking for Aziraphale. He found the angel kneeling by a woman who had fallen to the ground, buboes bulging from her neck, a living baby suckling desperately at her dead breast.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said as he approached. “You can go anywhere in space and time. You could be in Vienna trading notes with Mozart, or in a book club with Goethe in Jena, or posing for Michelangelo while he adds all the angels to the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Why are you here? Why do you keep going to the most miserable parts of history you can find?”

Aziraphale looked at him blankly, not getting the references to people who didn’t exist yet from his perspective. “I’m here on orders. Apparently, this whole Black Death thing is going to have a major impact on Europe’s spiritual and material development, although I’m not sure how many people will still be around to see it. Why are _you_ here? I thought you were going to lay low until this plague gets over with. I went by your place a few years ago, but you had a _Do Not Disturb_ sign on the door.”

“You could have knocked,” Crowley said in surprise. He remembered that he had been hiding out during the Black Death, quarantining from the misery as it were, but he hadn’t known that Aziraphale had come to see him.

“I didn’t want to bother you.”

“I wouldn’t have minded.” Crowley now really wished he hadn’t put that sign on his door. He only had because he didn’t want to see anyone other than Aziraphale, and he had assumed that Aziraphale still hated him. “What did you need, anyway?”

“Oh, nothing really. I just, well, I hadn’t seen you for a while, and …”

“You missed me,” Crowley said triumphantly, grinning. The newfound knowledge that Aziraphale had come to visit him for no other reason than the pleasure of his company retroactively brightened his opinion of the fourteenth century.

Aziraphale ducked his head in embarrassment. “Anyway,” he said, changing the subject, “do you have any intel on this plague? They’re saying Upstairs that our side had nothing to do with it, although they’re happy with the influx of new souls and increased piety among the living.”

“My side didn’t do it either,” Crowley said, knowing that much from the memos he had skimmed through at the time. “As best they can figure, it was the rats’ idea.”

“Hmm.” Aziraphale sadly picked up the baby from its dead mother. “An act of Nature. My orders are not to interfere. But this child will die if she’s left here. No one will come near her for fear of catching the plague. I don’t suppose there’s any harm in finding someone to care for her, is there? I mean, that’s not really interfering, is it?”

Crowley shrugged. “If it makes you feel better.”

“It does.”

“That child is probably going to get the plague and die regardless. Seems to be the trendy thing to do nowadays.”

“I know.” Aziraphale gently cradled the infant. “But maybe someone will love her first. She shouldn’t die alone on the street.”

“All right. Let’s go then.”

They walked the streets, searching for someone living who looked like they might stay that way for a bit. “Who is _that_?” Aziraphale said.

Crowley looked down the street to where Aziraphale was pointing. It was someone mounted on a gray horse so skinny its ribs stuck out like a barrel, with rats clustered around its hooves. The rider wore a long black cloak and the beaked mask of a plague doctor**. As Aziraphale and Crowley stared, the plague doctor paused his horse, shouldered his long cane, and turned his birdlike face toward them. Then he turned away and urged his horse to continue its slow walk through the city, with a trail of rats following behind.

“Pestilence,” Crowley said. He hadn’t ever actually seen that particular Horseman in person, as Pestilence had already retired and been replaced by Pollution by the time the Almost-Apocalypse rolled around. But the rider’s garb was unmistakable.

“Really?” Aziraphale said. “I should have known this was his doing.”

“Yeah. Seems right up his alley.” It was, as Aziraphale had said, an act of Nature. That’s what the Four Horsepersons were, forces of Nature. They didn’t work for either Heaven or Hell but were more like independent contractors. They were the career bureaucrats who kept things quietly and steadily running while political appointees came and went.

“You don’t think the Four of them are getting ready to ride together already, do you?” Aziraphale asked, a bit worriedly.

“No,” Crowley was able to say with confidence. “Not yet.”

“Good. I don’t think it’s time for that. I mean, Heaven is ready for victory, of course,” Aziraphale added quickly, still a loyal company man. “But I think the humans are just getting started. If they can make it through these dark times, they can do great things.” He wrapped the baby under a fold of his robe to keep her warm.

“They will,” Crowley said, thinking of Bentleys and tailored suits and Michelin-starred restaurants, all of which unfortunately lay on the far side of the fourteenth century.

They resumed their search for a living human to take the baby. “Why does Pestilence have to exist, anyway?” Aziraphale asked.

“Pretty sure that was my fault,” Crowley said equably. “There was no Pestilence in the Garden. It was part of that whole Fall of Man thing. Now humans get diseases and die from them as part of their suffering.”

“But why? Pestilence is indiscriminate. It strikes the good and the wicked equally. In a morally just world, how is that possible?”

“Ah, there’s the flaw in your logic. False premise. Who said this was a morally just world?”

“The Almighty. Heaven. The good are rewarded and the wicked are punished.”

“Well, to play devil’s advocate***, so to speak, that applies to the afterlife. The good and the wicked can live equally wretched lives and die equally agonizing deaths, but then the good get the dubious reward of going Upstairs to spend eternity with you lot while the wicked come Downstairs where the party is. There’s your morally just world for you.”

Aziraphale considered that. “I suppose. It just seems – unfair. But that’s what makes it ineffable, of course.”

“Right,” Crowley said sarcastically. “No point in it being effable.”

They finally came across a young woman, a girl really, drawing water from a well. Based on a quick once-over, she appeared to be bubo-free, at least on her exposed skin. “Excuse me, young lady,” Aziraphale said to her. “This baby’s mother just died. She needs someone to care for her.”

The girl’s nose wrinkled. “Died of what? Plague?”

“What else does anyone die of these days?” Crowley broke in. “Just when they’re getting all ready to die from something else, bam, along comes the plague.”

Aziraphale glared to shut him up. “The child is untouched by plague.” As Aziraphale spoke, he sent a wave of healing energy through the child, just to make sure that his words were true. “If you and your family take in this poor orphan,” Aziraphale went on, “God will bless you with great health and prosperity.”

Crowley glared at Aziraphale in turn, because he was pretty sure that Aziraphale didn’t have the authority to make that kind of promise. Of course, they were on the ethereal plane now, but this must have been something Aziraphale really did back in the fourteenth century. Crowley didn’t like to think that Aziraphale had been going around abusing his angelic power and potentially getting into trouble with his superiors while Crowley hadn’t been around to keep an eye on him.

“Health and prosperity?” The girl eyed Aziraphale as if he were a snake-oil salesman, when of course she should have been eying Crowley that way. “Who even believes in things like that anymore? My mother died of plague. Younger sister and brother too. And my uncle. And my cousin –”

“Well,” Crowley interrupted the litany of dead relatives, “that means you don’t have as many mouths to feed in your household, right? What’s one more?” He could tell by Aziraphale’s expression that he was being insensitive, so he reached down into the black depths of his heart to dredge up a thin slurry of compassion. Finding a home for this baby was obviously important to Aziraphale, so Crowley was determined to make it happen on the ethereal plane, regardless of what had happened to the orphaned child in the real world.

“Look,” Crowley said to the girl, “you said you lost your younger sister, right?” The girl nodded. “And you miss her, right?” Another nod. “So this baby can be like your new little sister. You get someone else to love and take care of. This world is a miserable place, especially right now. It will get better eventually, too late for you of course. Sorry about that, you really picked the wrong century to be born in. But you can make this little patch of the spacetime continuum a tiny bit better, just by being a human. Sometimes humans do terrible things to each other, but they also, you know, love each other and take care of each other and all that. So show those damn rats and fleas, and all the angels Above and demons Below, that humans aren’t going to lose their humanity no matter how many boils break out on their skin. Be human incarnate.”

The girl stared at him for a moment, then slowly reached her arms out for the baby.

“Bless you, dear child,” Aziraphale said. He handed over the baby and then placed a hand on the girl’s head. Crowley could sense the flow of more plague-resistant healing energy in another illicit little miracle. The girl headed back to her house with the baby, and Aziraphale, beaming, turned to Crowley.

“That was wonderful, Crowley,” he said. “Bless you too, my dear.”

“Ouch,” Crowley said, flinching away instinctively. “Watch where you point those blessings.”

“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale said. His eyes were shining with such joy that Crowley almost didn’t mind being blessed. “But to have prompted such an act of human kindness, in the midst of such despair – you would have made a fine angel.”

Crowley viscerally shuddered at the thought. “Don’t make me regret it,” he said. But as Aziraphale’s happy face blurred into the next spacetime jump, he knew that no amount of blessings or compliments could make him regret restoring the angel’s faith in humanity, even if for just a moment.

* * *

*If you want to replicate this smell, which there is no reason you should, take a sample of each fluid that can leak out of the orifices of the human body, mix them up in a cocktail shaker, and let the mixture sit out in the summer sun for three days.

**The guise of a plague doctor was the perfect cover for Pestilence. No one ever noticed that Dr. Schnabel failed to ever cure anyone, and that the plague didn’t arrive in town until after he did.

***Devil’s advocate is one of the most popular games in Hell. The rules are simple. The player must make the best argument they can for a position they don’t really hold, and when they’re done someone comes along and sticks a hot poker into their spleen. Sometimes the argument part is skipped altogether. It should be noted that this game is popular among spectators, not among players.


	14. Chapter 14

The smell of Crowley’s next location had modestly improved, a hopeful sign that he was out of the fourteenth century. Where the streets of the plague city had been empty, this new city had gathered a loud, raucous crowd. A huge shape looming overhead resolved itself into the gothic spires of the Rouen Cathedral. The crowd was jeering, wine freely flowing. Someone was selling souvenir woodcuts. Crowley knew of only one thing that could get a crowd in the Middle Ages this excited: a good old-fashioned execution*. Sure enough, he glimpsed through the crowd a pyre of wood, stacked high. On top of the pyre, a beautiful young woman was tied to the stake, a cross around her neck, her face upturned calmly toward the heavens as she waited to be set on fire.

“Oh, dear,” Aziraphale murmured from next to Crowley. “Isn’t there something we can do for the poor thing?”

“This was your side’s plan all along, wasn’t it?” Crowley said. “It was your boss the Archangel Michael who appeared to her and gave her the silly idea of driving out the English and taking the Dauphin Charles to Reims for his consecration. I mean, it was bound to end this way.” He remembered standing here, having this same conversation with Aziraphale, back in the real world, shortly after they had started socializing again after their three-century falling-out. The world had still been pretty lousy, what with the Hundred Years’ War and all, but Aziraphale seemed to have gotten over his anger from the Jerusalem incident, which had by itself made the fifteenth century much better than the fourteenth.

“Well, she will be a martyr for this,” Aziraphale said, trying to comfort himself. “She’ll be canonized as a saint, eventually.”

“Every girl’s dream,” Crowley said sarcastically. He was bitter about Joan of Arc’s fate, just as he had been when this had really happened. He had met her at the Siege of Orleans and had tried to dissuade her from continuing with her whole warrior of God idea, insisting that it could only lead to a flaming stake. But her faith had been too strong to allow her to listen to reason. She had said simply that she must do as the Lord willed her to do. In the end, Crowley had sent a report Downstairs, filing the interaction as a failed temptation. He would have gotten major accolades if he could have swayed her into abandoning her divine mission, which was why he had tried it in the first place, but by the end of their conversation his motivation had shifted. By then, he had found that he liked the girl and didn’t especially want to see her burned at the stake. She was barmy, that was clear. But she had such quiet courage, such conviction that she, an illiterate peasant girl, could be God’s instrument, that she honestly didn’t give a damn about what the enemy forces and the bishops thought of her or what they would do to her. It was hard not to admire that kind of self-confidence and disrespect for authority.

It looked like the action was starting. A hooded executioner stepped forward with a torch, lighting the pyre at Joan’s feet. Crowley remembered that, when the flames had died down, the English had raked back the coals and burned the charred body twice more, to prevent any collection of relics**, and then had thrown the ashes into the Seine for good measure. Now, as the first flames climbed her white dress, Joan closed her eyes, her lips moving in prayer.

Crowley turned away and pushed through the crowd, trying to get away from the smoke that was already filling the air. He couldn’t watch this a second time. Joan’s saintly burning face, filled with such grace, reminded him too much of the way Aziraphale had looked at him through the column of hellfire back at the bookshop. Now that he thought about it, Joan had reminded him of Aziraphale, which was probably why he had liked her so much. She had the same maddening faith in divine righteousness despite all evidence to the contrary. But, like Aziraphale, she had manifested that divine righteousness within herself and made it a reality within an uncaring and ungrateful world. This was why Crowley detested Upstairs so much. Downstairs was awful, too, there was no denying that, but at least they targeted people who deserved it. Upstairs had the unique ability to inspire wonderful things out of wonderful people and then use them for the most craven power-grabs and degraded politicking. It was only Heaven who could destroy spirits as graceful as Joan of Arc and Aziraphale.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale called to him, having followed him through the crowd and into an alley. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” Crowley said. Aziraphale was looking at him like he’d grown a second head. It was quite a role reversal. The first time around, Aziraphale had been the one who was upset over Joan’s demise, and Crowley had stood there cracking jokes in an attempt to lighten the angel’s mood. Now, standing in the alley, unable to escape the smoke or the sounds of the satisfied crowd’s cheers, Crowley felt defeated and, horrifically enough, like he was about to cry.

Aziraphale came up and put a hand on his shoulder. That simple act of comfort undid Crowley completely, and he found himself blinking away actual tears.

“Are you crying, my dear?” Aziraphale asked, looking at him as if he had grown a third head.

“It’s just the smoke,” Crowley said. “Gets in my eyes.”

Aziraphale waved his hand and, in a minor miracle, the smoke dispersed from the alley, although Crowley could still smell it. “Is that better?” Aziraphale asked.

“Yes,” Crowley said as a big fat teardrop ran down his face. He scrubbed it away impatiently and took a deep breath, trying to get his cool back.

“It is all right to be upset, my dear,” Aziraphale said uncertainly. “Sometimes the ineffability of it all gets to me too—”

“You work for terrible people,” Crowley broke in. “So do I, but I don’t really mind because I’m also a terrible person. But you’re not, and you already know that things are not entirely on the up and up Upstairs, and you’re going to come around fully to my way of thinking sometime in the next few centuries, and even though I was the one to point out to you repeatedly over the millennia just how terrible the people you work for are, sometimes I wish you didn’t care. Sometimes I wish you were selfish like me and could just look the other way and put your nose to the grindstone and do whatever you have to do to get through the day. Because if you don’t do that, someday you’ll go too far and they’ll destroy you.” Crowley was aware that his little speech was not going to do a lick of good, as the Aziraphale in the real world had already gone too far and had to face the consequences, but somehow he felt that, if he could get through to this Aziraphale, maybe things in the real world would turn out differently.

Aziraphale blinked. “Is this about Jerusalem?” he asked. “Because I—”

“No, forget about Jerusalem.” Crowley wished he could forget about it. “Never mind. Forget about all of it.”

Aziraphale didn’t say anything for a moment, but he kept his hand on Crowley’s shoulder. “Come on,” Aziraphale said finally. “There’s a lovely little winery just outside town.”

“Aren’t I supposed to be the one doing the tempting?” Crowley asked, managing to smile. This was another of their old games.

“It’s my turn.” Aziraphale smiled back. As the smoky skies wafted away for Crowley’s next spacetime jump, he cast one last look at the cathedral, lit up by the flickering flames consuming the holy martyr.

* * *

*A tarring and feathering would do it too.

**In those days, relics were controlled as tightly as nuclear arms are today.


	15. Chapter 15

Newt and Anathema stared blankly at the priest. “What is it you need, my children?” he repeated kindly.

Newt’s mind raced through lies he could tell. Then he felt guilty that he was about to lie to a priest, which gave him an idea. “I need to, um, confess my sins. That is a service you provide, isn’t it?”

“Of course, my son.” Apparently, they stuck the young priests with the Saturday evening mass, probably to keep them out of trouble. The man was around Newt’s age, and Newt resented being called “son” by him.

“Good. Because I’ve got loads of sins. So many sins, let me tell you, it will take a while to get through them all.” Newt shot a glance at Anathema, trying to silently tell her that he was creating a distraction so that she could fill their jugs with holy water. Anathema, not being an idiot, rolled her eyes and nodded to tell him that she got it.

“The confessional is right this way.” The priest gestured toward the back of the cathedral, where the choir had been*. “If the young lady doesn’t mind waiting here…?”

“I don’t mind,” Anathema said. “He's my husband, so I already know all about his sins. I mean, there better not be any I don’t know about.”

“All right, then.” The priest led Newt back to the confessional. The priest got inside and shut the door, like he was Clark Kent using a telephone booth to change into his Superman costume. Newt quickly found a low stool outside the confessional, where it seemed he was meant to kneel, and kneeled on it. He placed his elbows on the little table, which it seemed had been left there for that purpose, and bowed his head in penitence. He snuck a glance back over his shoulder, where Anathema was assembling the water jugs next to the baptismal font. Newt could not believe that he had, on the spot, come up with the perfect distraction. That was not the kind of quick thinking he expected from himself. The priest couldn’t see anything that was going on from inside the confessional, so Newt just had to keep him occupied.

There was a clearing of the throat from inside the confessional, and Newt realized that the priest was hinting at him to start with the confessing.

“Bless me Father, for I have sinned,” said Newt, having gleaned through cultural osmosis that this was the usual opener. “It has been, er, rather a long time since my last confession.” He looked over his shoulder again. Anathema had stuffed one of the jugs into the font but was having difficulty filling it because it was too big to completely submerge in the holy water.

“Well?” came the priest’s weary voice through the louvered wall of the booth. _Get on with it_ was not actually said but was implied in the tone. Maybe the priest had plans for his Saturday night too.**

“Well,” Newt said. “Like I said, I’ve got loads of sins.” Anathema had grabbed from the altar the chalice that had carried the blood of Christ and was using it as a scoop to fill one of the jugs from the font. Unfortunately, the jug had a narrow neck, and half the holy water she was pouring ended up streaming down its side.

“Such as?”

“I got a parking ticket,” Newt blurted out.

There was a pained silence. “Is that all?”

“Oh, no. That’s just the start of it. I, um, blasphemed. Twice, I think.” Newt was pretty sure that taking the Lord’s name in vain and taking Communion as a non-Catholic were blasphemies, but he thought that lying and stealing, which he had also just done, were not necessarily blasphemies but rather sins. As he thought about, he became confused about what the difference between a blasphemy and a sin was, then realized that he didn’t have to be confused because he had an expert sitting right next to him. “Say, Father, what is the difference between a blasphemy and a sin?”

Newt saw that Anathema was filling the jug with the chalice as frantically as if she were bailing out a leaky wooden rowboat. He hoped that his theological question would take a long time to answer.

“A blasphemy is a type of sin. The gravest of all sins, because it is a sin committed directly against God rather than against one’s neighbor.”***

“Ah. Well, like I said, I’ve been doing a bit of blaspheming. And I’ve sinned against my neighbor too while I was at it. I lied. And I stole.” He looked guiltily at the case they had taken Pope Clement’s relic from. “Working on violating all Ten Commandments, I am.”

“Anything else?” the priest asked.

“Yes,” Newt said. He seized on the Ten Commandments for ideas, having exhausted his list of recent sins. “I don’t observe the Sabbath. Most Sundays, I meet my mates at the pub. And I don’t really honor my parents like I should, I mostly use them as free babysitters. The kids are with them right now, as a matter of fact. Oh, and you wouldn’t believe how much coveting I do. So much coveting…” He tried to remember what the other Commandments were. He knew adultery was one, but he wasn’t going to confess to that even in jest, not when his wife and her very scary witch powers were ten feet away. “Er, isn’t there one about graven images –”

There was a sudden splashing sound. “What the—” the priest said, opening the door to the confessional and peering out.

Anathema was standing, rather sheepishly, next to an overturned jug she had accidentally kicked over. Holy water was seeping into the carpet. Anathema gently set down the blood-of-Christ-bearing chalice.

“What are you doing?” The priest started toward Anathema, who looked helplessly over at Newt.

It looked like they were going to have to resort to doing something surprising. As he stood up to make his move, Newt wondered what that move would be.

* * *

*This part of the cathedral is called the chancery, but Newt didn’t know that.

**Those plans involved a hot cup of tea, some reading of the Scriptures, and a great deal of spiritual introspection.

***This was actually a matter of some debate among theologians. It was Aquinas, for example, who had written that blasphemy is a sin against God and therefore a greater sin than murder, a sin against one’s neighbor. But Aquinas had been fair-minded enough to point out that, on the other hand, murder was a graver sin when you consider the harm wrought by the sin against its object, since the murder victim ends up dead while blasphemy slides off God like water off a duck. The priest was giving the condensed version of this debate to Newt because the hot tea he had waiting in his room wasn’t going to drink itself.


	16. Chapter 16

Following the next spacetime jump, Crowley was relieved to find himself in a place with fresher air. Mountain air. The sun was directly overhead, indicating a tropical location, but the temperature was surprisingly comfortable.

Crowley saw that he was in another medieval-looking city, with cobbled streets and stone buildings. But it was clear that this place was very different from where he had just been. The streets sloped steeply, with buildings arranged like steps in a staircase for want of any flat ground to put them, and lush green fog-shrouded mountains towered above the city. Other than a couple of llamas hanging about, the streets were clear of animals, which probably accounted for the improved odor. There weren’t many people around, either. The few people hurrying through the streets all wore intricately patterned wool shawls in every color of the rainbow. They looked rather distraught, as if the world was ending. Crowley heard hoofbeats on the cobblestoned street and, turning to see who was coming, saw that for the inhabitants of this city, the world had indeed ended.

The men riding their horses through the streets had long beards, stern brows, shining armor, and scary-looking swords. Conquistadors. They were riding with the satisfied air of an invading force who have got their conquisting done.

“A New World,” Crowley heard Aziraphale say. Crowley looked back to see that Aziraphale had come up behind him and was eying the conquistadors with suspicion. “Who would have thought,” Aziraphale said, shaking his head.

“Well, it’s not really new to the people who have been living here all this time,” Crowley felt obliged to point out. In the real world, he had mostly stayed back in Europe while all the conquering was going on. But it made sense that Aziraphale had been sent to the Americas while they were being claimed in the name of God.

“Did you know all this was here?” Aziraphale asked.

“Eh, stood to reason there had to be something on the other side of the ocean.”

“It’s a beautiful land. Have you seen much of it?”

“A bit,” said Crowley, who had spent a year in Las Vegas during the Rat Pack era.

“Great mountains and jungles and deserts and rivers like you wouldn’t believe,” Aziraphale said, shaking his head. “And such amazing creatures. Up north, in the grasslands, they have these massive herds of bison, like something from the days of myth. When the herd moves, it shakes the Earth like thunder.”

“You should do the tourism brochures.”

“And the people,” Aziraphale went on, ignoring him. “So many different cultures, from the tundra to the rainforest. And they all have their own languages and stories and songs.” He sounded wistful about the opportunity to learn about the beautifully diverse flourishing of human cultures and art, but Crowley, having the benefit of hindsight, knew where all this was headed.

“And their own gods,” Crowley said darkly. “Bet your side loves that.”

Aziraphale cleared his throat. “Heaven is excited for the opportunity to expand its operations into the New World.”

Crowley shook his head in disgust. “They’re coming at these people with a Bible in one hand and a sword in the other. And with the other they’re grabbing up all the natural resources.”

“That’s three hands,” Aziraphale said, but he didn’t sound like he disagreed.

“Look at this,” Crowley said. They were standing by a temple constructed by the indigenous population, with walls so finely crafted that each individual stone fit in with its neighbors like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, with no space in between, no need for mortar. A stone wall so perfect it made one want to weep. “You know they’re going to build a cathedral right on top of this temple?”

“A cathedral? Here?” Aziraphale said. “They could build it anywhere, it doesn’t have to be right on top of the temple.”

“It does, because they’re sending a message. They’re trampling these people’s beliefs right into the ground and stealing all the gold out of the temple while they’re at it.”

Aziraphale looked distressed. “Yes, I know. It’s a terrible thing.”

“And that’s not all,” Crowley continued, on a roll. He remembered reading memos about what had been going on in the New World at this time. “Pizarro just overthrew the empire here. He captured Emperor Atahuallpa in Cajamarca, after Atahuallpa threw Pizzaro’s breviary on the ground because he didn’t know what it was. Now the Spanish are holding him prisoner and collecting a ransom of gold and silver. But even after they get their ransom, they’re going to kill the emperor anyway. Atahuallpa was a bastard too, emperors usually are, but these conquistadors are something else. They’re holding seminars on Hell on how to be more evil using the conquistadors as an example. And now the Spanish will be subjugating these people. The ones who haven’t died from the European diseases, anyway.”

“Humans do horrible things to each other. It’s part of free will, that they can choose to do that.”

“Well, the Spanish aren’t conquering these lands in the name of Hell, that’s for sure. Above is all in on this venture.”

“Well, that’s because there’s so many souls here to save,” Aziraphale said halfheartedly. “They haven’t heard the Good News*, but that’s not their fault because there weren’t any Bibles here until now. So now is their chance.”

“Right, save the poor ignorant heathens.”

“I never called them that.”

“That’s what your side calls them. Although I doubt the Spanish would be half as interested in saving their souls if the place weren’t busting at the seams with gold.”

“The people who live here aren’t heathens,” Aziraphale said sadly, looking at the loads of gold and silver being carted out of the temple for the emperor’s ransom. “They’re devout. This is the temple where they worship Inti, the Sun God. Inti was the son of Pachamama, the Earth mother, and Viracocha, the creator. Viracocha rose from Lake Titicaca during the time of darkness to bring forth light. He started with the sun, moon, and stars, then made humans by breathing into stones. But he wasn’t satisfied with the first humans, so he made a great flood to destroy them and started from scratch.”

“Sounds familiar,” Crowley said.

“These people have reverence for the divine. They just call it by different names. What’s wrong with that?”

“That’s blasphemy.” Crowley was impressed. “I never thought you had it in you.”

“It’s not blasphemy,” Aziraphale said, although he shot a quick guilty look at the sky. “It’s just – asking questions.”

“That’s what got me into trouble. Don’t go talking like that around the office.”

“No, I suppose I shouldn’t.”

Aziraphale looked so downcast that Crowley clapped him on the shoulder and said, “Come on. If I know humans, the locals have developed some method for getting completely pissed**.”

“It’s called chicha,” Aziraphale confirmed. “Made from fermented maize. It’s a bit of an acquired taste.”

“Well, let’s go acquire it then.”

And so Crowley finally succeeded in getting himself a drink on the ethereal plane. He wasn’t a big fan of the chicha, but after the third or fourth one he didn’t mind it so much. He just sat and listened to Aziraphale describe, in ever more rambling detail as his chicha consumption progressed, the wonders of the New World, from the expertly engineered mountain roads to the record-keeping system based on knotted strings to the beauty of the pan-pipe music to the softness of alpaca wool. It was so much like all the other pleasantly intoxicated evenings they had spent together in bars and pubs and restaurants from one end of the Earth to the other, Crowley almost forgot that they weren’t in the real world. Accordingly, he had to drunkenly wonder exactly what had been in that chicha as the scene again blurred away for another move through spacetime.

* * *

*The people of the New World were understandably confused as to what was so Good about this News.

**Along with language, music, dance, art, and ritual, getting completely pissed is recognized by anthropologists as a cultural universal.


	17. Chapter 17

Crowley arrived at his next destination disappointingly sober. Apparently, the chicha’s intoxicating effects had not traveled with him. But at least the smell that greeted him at this new location was, for once, pleasant. Incense and old books. That beloved smell slammed into him with bittersweet recognition. He was in the back room of the bookshop, where he had started.

Only it wasn’t quite where he had started. From the other side of the room, Aziraphale turned to him, his eyes wide with panic. “Crowley,” he whispered frantically, as if afraid of being overheard. “I just tried ringing you, I was about to try your other line. Where have you _been_?”

“Er,” Crowley said, trying to figure out when exactly this was so he could determine where the him from this point of the spacetime continuum had just been.

“Listen,” Aziraphale said in a rapid, low voice, coming closer. “I haven’t got much time. The—” he cast a paranoid glance over his shoulder and just mouthed the next word – “ _Antichrist_ is in Tadfield, that’s what I was sensing there, it’s all in the book –”

“Wait.” Crowley knew, of course, when this was now. This was the Almost-Apocalypse, and at this moment Crowley had been in his flat, facing off against two Dukes of Hell, while Aziraphale was about to somehow disincorporate himself and burn his bookshop down. Good times.

“I can’t wait, just listen,” Aziraphale hissed, which was usually more Crowley’s thing. “I made a terrible mistake. I told Heaven where the boy is. I thought – I was so stupid – I thought they’d call off the whole war, but they’re not going to, they’re in it to win, and I am so sorry, Crowley –”

“It’s all right,” Crowley said automatically, gripping Aziraphale’s shoulders.

“No, it’s not. You were right about them all along, and I should have listened to you – but anyway, there’s no time, you have to go to Tadfield and stop it –”

“Where are you going?” Now that Crowley was finally talking to the modern-day, or almost modern-day, version of Aziraphale, he didn’t want him to go anywhere.

Aziraphale jerked his head back to what Crowley now realized was the portal to Heaven, a blue shaft of light shining into a chalk circle on the floorboards surrounded by seven candles. “They left the line open,” Aziraphale said gloomily. “I’m being recalled. They want me to fight.”

“You can’t,” Crowley said. “And put out those candles, will you? Do you know what a fire hazard that is? Candles dripping wax on old dry wood floorboards, and all these books around, it’s like a tinderbox waiting to flare up –”

“Just put the candles out after I’ve gone, all right? And then go straight to Tadfield.” Aziraphale tried to extricate himself from Crowley’s grip, but Crowley held fast. Despite being aware on an intellectual level that none of this was real, it felt as real as anything Crowley had ever experienced. Some instinct told him that, if Aziraphale stepped into that column of blue light, it would send him somewhere Crowley couldn’t follow. It would mean Aziraphale had given up and that the deep core part of his being, his ethereal essence, would be lost forever, unable to return to the real world no matter how well the humans patched up his wings using Pope Clement’s toenails.

“You’re not going back to Heaven,” Crowley said fiercely. “You can’t fight for them. You don’t even know how to hold a flaming sword properly, I remember you kept singeing your robe –”

“Crowley –”

“You’ll be fighting demons, and you won’t stand a chance against them because demons fight dirty—”

“Crowley, listen –”

“Would you fight me? What if Hell recalls me too? We can’t fight on opposite sides.” As horrible as it had been for Crowley to run into that burning bookshop and find Aziraphale gone, he realized that it could have been even worse. If Aziraphale hadn’t been accidentally disincorporated and subsequently found a temporary host in Madame Tracy, he would have been recalled to join the legions of Heaven, battling Hell in a terrible war that would destroy the Earth, a battle that Crowley of course wouldn’t have been able to stop because he wouldn’t have had Aziraphale with him in Tadfield. This whole ethereal plane trip was great for showing new and exciting ways in which their lives could have been destroyed that hadn’t even occurred to Crowley before.

Aziraphale stopped struggling, placing his hands on Crowley’s shoulders. “Of course, I wouldn’t fight you, my dear. But you won’t be in the battle, you’ll be in Tadfield, and if you just go now and get it done, maybe there won’t be a battle at all.”

Crowley shook his head. “I can’t do it without you.” He wasn’t talking about the Apocalypse anymore. Feeling overwhelmed, he leaned his head against Aziraphale’s shoulder, and Aziraphale wrapped his arms around him and patted his back reassuringly.

“I knew it!” came a voice from the door. “Pansies, the both of ye!”

Still keeping one arm on Aziraphale, lest he make a break for the portal, Crowley slowly turned around. He was initially afraid that one of Heaven’s agents had snuck in while they were distracted, but the intruder was human. It was that mad nipple-obsessed old man with the indecipherable accent that he and Aziraphale had independently, and in retrospect unwisely, employed as a human operative. Shadwell.

“Southern Nancy boys, and the spawn o’ hell too, ye both are*!” Shadwell shouted, sounding undecided as to which was the worse offense. “Thought ye could make a fool o’ me and the glorious traditions o’ the Army, did ye?”

“Er, things are not what they seem –” Aziraphale said as Shadwell advanced into the shop with all the mouth-foaming and eye-rolling of a rabies-crazed dog. Crowley was beginning to glean a sense of how exactly Aziraphale had managed to disincorporate himself and burn his bookshop down. The angel didn’t know how to handle situations like these, so Crowley handled it himself.

“Bugger off, we’re in the middle of something,” Crowley said, and waved a hand. Shadwell disappeared.

“Oh,” Aziraphale said. “I suppose I could have done that. But where did you send him?”

“Away. That’s the trick, you don’t think about where to. Don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of it.”

“If you say so,” Aziraphale said doubtfully.

Crowley felt that the two of them had been having a moment, and that the moment had been ruined by Shadwell, for which he was somewhat grateful to Shadwell. “Anyway,” Crowley said, “you can’t leave me here to deal with all this alone. I couldn’t have done it without you, all right? I had given up. Adam stood up to them like the disobedient little rascal he was, but then he was wavering, and I was about to learn to stop worrying and love the Apocalypse, but then you, you brilliant bastard, you started asking them about the ineffable plan and whether stopping the Apocalypse mightn’t be a part of it, and Metatron’s and Beelzebub’s heads pretty much exploded like a malevolent artificial intelligence presented with a logical paradox** in a science fiction movie—”

“Crowley, my dear,” Aziraphale said wearily. “You know I have a hard time following these expressions of yours.”

“What I’m saying is this,” Crowley said, gathering himself and preparing to marshal his arguments. “Don’t go. The Earth needs you. Humanity needs you. I don’t want to come out and actually say that I need you, but if it helps, I will –”

“I’ve been ordered back,” Aziraphale said. “I don’t have a choice.”

“You have a choice.” Crowley gripped Aziraphale’s shoulder tighter. He could feel that he had reached the crux of the matter, that this was the thing he had to make Aziraphale understand. “You can choose what you believe in. Just because Heaven is a bunch of hypocritical self-righteous tossers following the demented will of a cruel God, that doesn’t mean you have to give up on everything. You can stand with humanity, and all the great symphonies and works of literature they’ve created and the ones that are yet to be written. Just stay here with me. Please.”

Aziraphale’s face softened. “If it’s my choice,” he said, “I choose to stay with you. Of course.”

Crowley relaxed, and the bright blue light faded. Then it flared back up with a vengeance, like a spark reinvigorated by a breeze. “Damn it,” Crowley said, as the column of light expanded its radius wider and wider.

“We’d better leave,” Aziraphale said worriedly.

“That is a fantastic idea, and I couldn’t agree more,” Crowley said, flinging open the door to the bookshop while maintaining his tight grip on Aziraphale’s shoulder. But the sky outside was suffused with that same sinister blue light, like Heaven was launching an aerial assault on Soho.

Crowley looked at Aziraphale, who looked as panicked as he felt. “Crowley, what is happening?”

“Do I look I know what’s happening?” Crowley snapped. “Just hang onto me, all right? Don’t let go, no matter what.” Crowley took hold of Aziraphale’s elbows, feeling the angel’s grip on his in return as the blue light consumed them both.

* * *

*As usual, Shadwell was wrong, but as usual, he would have been surprised to learn how nearly right he was.

**When in doubt, challenge it to a game of tic-tac-toe.


	18. Chapter 18

Anathema realized that she would have to take the lead on this next part. Newt had done unexpectedly well up to this point. The confessional had been a good idea. But Newt’s good ideas were a limited resource, and he didn’t always know to quit while he was ahead. It wasn’t something he had a lot of experience with, because he was so seldom ahead.

So Anathema whispered a quick little spell, casting a shower of golden sparks around herself. That was all the spell did. It was pretty much useless, but it did look rather impressive.

The priest halted, then took out a crucifix like a quick-drawing Wild West sheriff, as if he had trained for this very moment. His hand trembled just a little as he held the crucifix in front of himself. “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, take hold of the dragon, the old serpent, which is the devil and Satan –”

“Are you exorcising me?” Anathema asked, mildly interested. She had never seen an exorcism before.

The priest just spoke louder. “Bind him and cast him into the bottomless pit—”

“Sorry to interrupt,” Anathema interrupted. “But I’m not possessed by a demon. I am acquainted with one, but our relationship is strictly professional.”

The priest broke off the exorcism, although he kept the crucifix in place. “You are an unearthly creature, foul and evil—”

“Hey, that’s my wife you’re talking to,” Newt said gallantly.

The priest lowered the crucifix. He reached into his robes and pulled out a mobile phone, apparently having decided that the situation called for more modern tools.

“Drop the phone,” Anathema said, and by way of encouragement did a little spell that made the phone too hot to hold. The priest dropped it. Newt swept in and stomped on the phone a couple of times, smashing the screen.

The priest looked like he was going to cry. “Please don’t kill me,” he said.

“What?” Newt said incredulously. “No, we – we’re the good guys.” The priest looked doubtfully down at the smashed phone. Newt reached into his wallet. “Look, here’s—” he counted out some money – “eighty pounds. I know that’s not enough to replace your phone, but that’s all I have on me, I can post you the rest later –"

“Listen, padre,” Anathema interrupted, recognizing that she would have to be the bad cop. “All we want is some holy water, all right? Let us take it and we’ll be out of your hair.”

“Holy water?” the priest repeated. “What do you want that for?”

“You let us worry about that,” Anathema said. “We need a lot of it. Enough to fill all these containers.” She pointed to the four gallon jugs on the floor. “There was hardly enough to fill one in this baptismal font, and I, um, spilled most of it. Where do you keep the rest of it?”

“That’s all,” the priest said. “We just keep it in the stoups by the entrance and in the baptismal font.* It’s not like we bathe in the stuff.”

“Damn it,” Newt said, then added quickly, “Sorry, Father. It’s just that we really need it.”

Anathema thought for a moment. “Well, holy water is just water that’s been blessed by a priest, right? So we can just fill these containers from the tap, and you can bless them.”

“No.” The priest shook his head. “I won’t cooperate.”

“Why the hell not?” Newt demanded. “Sorry, but it’s water. What harm could we possibly do with it?”

“You want it for witchcraft, don’t you? You’re witches.”

“No,” Newt said. “Well, yes, she’s a witch. I used to be a witchfinder, actually. That’s how we met, kind of a romantic story – anyway, this is probably going to be hard to believe, but we need the holy water to heal an angel.”

“Uh-huh,” the priest said skeptically.

“Just bless the damn water,” Anathema said, losing her patience. “Or the hammer of the witches will come down on your head.” She sent up another threatening shower of sparks.

“All right,” the priest said, fear in his eyes. “Just don’t hurt me.”

“Well, good, then,” Newt said. “Er, where can we fill these containers?”

The priest gave Newt directions to the loo, and Newt took the jugs two at a time to fill from the tap while Anathema stood guard.

“How does the chemistry work, anyway?” Newt asked as he returned with the second two filled jugs. “I assume if you mix holy water with regular water, it gets diluted, right? But what is that dilution factor?** And how much holy water can you bless at once? Could you bless the ocean and turn it into a holy ocean or, say, bless the Thames and turn it into a holy river***—"

“Newt,” Anathema said firmly. “No time for that. Now, you,” she said, addressing the priest, “do your thing.”

The priest bowed over the four containers. “Lord, holy Father, look with kindness on your children redeemed by your Son and born to a new life by water and the Holy Spirit. Grant that those who are sprinkled with this water may be renewed in body and spirit and may make a pure offering of their service to you. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

“It’s done?” Newt asked. “These are holy now?”

“Yes, yes, holy as can be,” the priest said. “Now will you leave already?”

Meeting Newt’s eye, Anathema nodded. She had the relic, which the priest had not noticed was missing, in her pocketbook, and she and Newt hoisted up the containers of holy water between them.

“We are sorry about all this,” Newt apologized one more time, and then he and Anathema made a break for it, out through the cathedral doors, down the steps, and along the sidewalk back to where Dick Turpin was parked.

All the way, they felt as though the authorities should be pursuing them – with police cars, helicopters, jet-skis – so they walked as quickly but casually as possible. But the only authority who had taken an interest in them was parking enforcement, who had left another ticket on Dick Turpin’s window.† All in all, it was a successful launch of their lives of crime.

* * *

*Where the holy water serves as a breeding ground for holy pathogens.

**The answer is 1:5. That is, one unit volume of holy water with four unit volumes of regular water gives a total of five unit volumes of holy water. Any dilution beyond that and all you’ve got is water.

***The answer is no. The Thames has been, as theo-hydrologists say, profaned. That’s a polite way of saying that it has been the recipient of London’s sewage for centuries.

†This time, Newt had failed to notice that he had parked in a delivery zone.


	19. Chapter 19

Unexpectedly, Crowley found himself in a familiar place. That was unexpected, firstly because he hadn’t expected to find himself anywhere at all, having assumed that the malicious blue heavenly light would dissolve away his ethereal essence*, as it had looked like it was about to do something like that. Secondarily, it was unexpected because, if he had bothered to assemble any expectations about where he would find himself, he would not have expected to find himself here.

Where he found himself was the Garden of Eden. Not the overgrown weedy ruins of it that he and Aziraphale had visited the year before on their trip to the Armenian highlands, but the Genesis version, in full bloom, unfallen. Crowley had a moment of relief, that he hadn’t been dissolved away by the malicious blue heavenly light, and that Aziraphale was still with him. The angel was standing beside him at the Eastern Gate, looking very impressive with his flaming sword, although he kept singeing the sleeve of his robe on it. Crowley’s relief that they were still alive quickly transitioned into frustration. He had just had the almost-current version of Aziraphale back. Now here, they were, at the Beginning of it all, when Aziraphale didn’t know him from Adam, so to speak. It was almost like losing Aziraphale all over again.

“Come on, this isn’t fair,” Crowley said. He found himself hissing and noticed that he was in his snake form. He quickly transitioned out of it, because he was in no mood to be a snake right now. The forked tongue made it too difficult to shout properly, and he was working up to a good shout. “We were going forward in time,” Crowley continued once he was in his human form. “We were getting further and further away from the fourteenth century, and now we’ll have to go through it all over again. And besides, you can’t set up an expectation that time is progressing in a forward direction and then violate that, it ruins the flow of the narrative. Here, just roll your sleeves up.” Crowley impatiently grabbed Aziraphale’s wrists and rolled his sleeves back to protect them from the flaming sword. It was only then that he realized that Aziraphale was silently laughing at him.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said. He said the name with the affectionate tone Crowley was used to hearing from Aziraphale and exactly no one else. Which didn’t make sense because, at this point in their history, they weren’t even on a first-name basis. Come to think of it, if Aziraphale still had the sword, that meant that Crowley hadn’t even struck up a conversation with him yet. Come to think of it even more, Crowley had still been going by the name Crawly back then. All of which meant that …

“Aziraphale? That you?” Crowley asked warily.

“Yes. I know now that we’re on the ethereal plane.”

“Oh, thank somebody,” Crowley said fervently. He was finally speaking with his Aziraphale. “That was getting really tiresome, you not remembering anything that came after.”

“I remember it all now. The way it all happened the first time around, and then the way you changed things the second time through.” Aziraphale smiled. “For instance, I remember what really happened in Jerusalem. You chopped my head off.”

Crowley scowled, not ready to make light of that. “You never gave me a chance to explain why I did it.”

“I always knew why you did it. You were saving me from myself.”

Crowley was indignant. “Then why were you in a snit about it for three hundred years?”

“I was pig-headed back then. Didn’t want to admit that you were right.”

“Well, I’m glad that’s changed,” Crowley said, laying the sarcasm on thickly.

“It has. You were right about a lot of things.” The sincerity in Aziraphale’s voice was so heartfelt that Crowley immediately wanted to change the subject.

“Why, if may I ask,” he asked, “did you drag me through the worst periods of history you could find?”

“I wasn’t doing it on purpose. Those were the times that drew me in. They were my temptations.”

“Your temptations? Sorry, but I’m a bit of an expert here, and if you found anything to tempt you in any of those situations, you’re doing it wrong.”

“Not temptation in the sense of inclination to sin,” Aziraphale explained patiently. “Temptation in the sense of a trial or test. Those were the times in my existence when I most strongly questioned my faith.”

“Oh.” Looking back on the events, Crowley could see that was the common thread that linked them all. “But I wasn’t even there for half of them. Originally, I mean.”

“No,” Aziraphale said slowly, like he was trying to understand what Crowley was getting at.

“I, er, I always thought I was the one who made you question your faith,” Crowley confessed.

“No, my dear.” Aziraphale sounded taken aback. “You’re the one who gave it back to me.”

“I did what now?”

“You taught me that I didn’t need to have faith in the Almighty or Heaven. Instead, I could have faith in humanity, and in my own capacity to tell right from wrong, and, well, in you.”

Crowley felt a warm inner glow inside at that. It made him feel a bit itchy. Warm inner glows didn’t agree with him.

“When I was burned by the hellfire,” Aziraphale went on, “it almost destroyed my essence. For angels, our essence is our faith. That’s where the temptations came from. I was lost in doubt and despair, which took the form of those terrible memories. But you were there with me. You restored my faith, so I could find myself again.”

“So you’re – you’re all fine, now?” Crowley asked hopefully. “You’re ready to go back to the material plane? Once the humans fix your wings, obviously.”

“I suppose so.”

“I’m going to need more of a commitment than that. I didn’t relive the fourteenth century just so you could suppose so.”

Aziraphale sighed. “Have you given any thought to what will happen to us? Above and Below will be even more displeased with us than they already were, and the Almighty seems disinclined to help us.”

“We’ll figure something out.” Crowley realized that it wasn’t that reassuring a thing to say, but it was what he honestly believed.

Aziraphale looked unconvinced. “If they really put their minds to it, they’ll be able to destroy us. It's not that hard a thing to do, and they’ll be motivated to put in a good effort this time.”

“Well,” Crowley said, thinking aloud, “we could always just stay here.”

“Here? This isn’t even real.”

Crowley shrugged. “It feels real. It smells real, as I wish I weren’t able to confirm. The alcohol really gets you drunk. And we’re, you know. Together. You could just take us to some nice point in the spacetime continuum – Italy in the Renaissance, or France in the Enlightenment, or New York in the Seventies before they cleaned it up and turned it into a theme park. Or even London now. Then we could just keep living our lives, and they wouldn’t be able to get to us.”

Aziraphale shook his head. “It wouldn’t work. This is a world that I created entirely from my memories. The only places that exist are the ones I’ve been. The only people that exist are you and me.”

“Well, you’ve been to all those places.” Crowley didn’t add that he didn’t need anyone else to exist, no matter how true it was.

“We would never be able to go forward in time. We’d just be stuck in the past forever. Nothing would ever happen to us again.”

“And? Nothing good ever happens to us anyway.”

“It wouldn’t be the same. Not now that I know. It’s like when you miracle a stain out of your coat. You know the stain is still there. We’d always know that we were living in an illusion.”

“So you’ll come back to the real world, then.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, resigned. “I’ll come back to the real world.”

“Good.” They sat in silence for a few minutes, breathing in the air of Eden. Crowley had forgotten how clean that air had been. It was young air, innocent air, free of anything to muck it up yet. “Why are we in Eden now?” Crowley asked. “Was this one of your temptations?”

“The very first one. I was new to the job, so I was sure I must be missing something, but I couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about with that apple.”

“You and me both.”

“I suppose I’m in a nostalgic mood,” Aziraphale said, using the flaming sword to poke at some flowers, which burst into flames. He guiltily stomped the fire out, saying, “That’s why I brought us back here.”

“Yeah. Where it all began.” Crowley found himself lost in nostalgia too. “You know, I only started talking to you that day because I was bored. I never expected you to actually talk to me. Were you just being polite?”

“No. To be honest, I was bored too. And I had never met anyone like you. You were by far the most interesting person I had ever encountered.”

“Well, you weren’t like any angel I had ever met either. You didn’t look down on me. Even though I was literally a snake at the time.” They spent a few more minutes in companionable silence, then Crowley said, “Anyway, Eden is nice and all, but it could use a bar**. Why don’t you shift us to somewhere we can get a drink while we wait? Maybe that place in Barcelona, if you can remember enough from that one night to be able to reconstruct it –"

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said. “I don’t want to alarm you, but you seem to be disappearing.”

Alarmed, Crowley looked down. His body, or the projection of it that he had been inhabiting in the ethereal plane, was indeed disappearing. Moreover, now he could feel himself returning to his real body, the one on the material plane. He fought against it, but he could feel himself becoming more solid and corporeal with each passing second despite his best efforts. “I think I’m going back,” Crowley said. “Are you going back?”

“No, I don’t think so.” Aziraphale looked bemused.

“You have to. Here, put that sword down.” Crowley took the sword from Aziraphale and threw it on the ground, starting a small grass fire. Now that Aziraphale’s hands were free, Crowley gripped them in his own. “If I’m going back, you have to come with me.”

“I can’t, I don’t think there’s anything for me to return to—”

“Aziraphale!” Crowley felt the name rip out of his throat, his real material throat on the real material plane. He was in the bookshop, lying on the mattress on the floor, with Aziraphale’s burned body still cradled in his wing. Adam had just taken his fingers off Crowley’s forehead, and Newt, Anathema, and the dog were all gawking. But there wasn’t even the slightest spark of Aziraphale’s ethereal essence in the incorporation that Crowley was clutching in his wing. Aziraphale was still lost.

* * *

*Occult essence, technically, but it amounted to the same thing.

**Humans hadn’t yet figured out that the fruit in the Garden was even more enjoyable if you let it ferment for a while. It was only after the Fall that they discovered, through a happy accident, the wonders of fermentation. Conveniently, it was after the Fall when humanity found itself in need of a stiff drink.


	20. Chapter 20

“You stupid bastards,” Crowley shouted. He was angry enough to spit nails, so it was fortunate for the humans that there weren’t any nails around. “I had him, I was just there with him. Why did you bring me back now, you ignorant knuckle-dragging mortals –”

“Crowley,” Anathema interrupted. “We have the supplies. We’re ready to heal Aziraphale and restore his wings. But Adam brought you back because we need your help.”

“You found him,” Adam added. “He’ll be able to make his own way back now. But we have to do it quickly.”

“Fine,” Crowley said. He tried not to look at Aziraphale’s wounded body. After his sojourn to the ethereal plane, where Aziraphale had appeared healthy and whole, seeing all those horrid burns again was too painful. “What do you need from me?”

“A bathtub,” Anathema said.

Crowley counted to three before replying. These humans were his only hope, so sending them Away in a fit of anger would not be productive. “You brought me back,” Crowley said with what he thought to be admirable restraint, “because you need me to get you a bathtub?”

“He needs to be immersed in the holy water,” Anathema said, unperturbed.

Crowley made a gesture that would get one punched in the face in several countries, and a claw-footed bathtub appeared in the center of the room.

“Let’s get him into it, then,” Anathema said.

Crowley quickly manifested a pair of swim trunks onto Aziraphale so the humans wouldn’t get weird about it, and he and Newt lifted the angel and placed him in the bathtub.

“You should stand back for this part,” Anathema told him, carrying one of the containers of holy water over to the tub. Crowley just glared at her, miracled up a Hazmat suit for himself, and knelt beside Aziraphale. Anathema shrugged as she and Newt emptied the containers of holy water into the tub. The volume wasn’t nearly enough to immerse Aziraphale, so they started filling the containers from the tap and pouring unholy water in as well.

“We looked up the dilution ratio,” Newt explained, looking pleased with himself. “Holy water can be mixed with up to four parts unholy water while retaining its power.”

When the tub was full, the humans gathered round. Adam kept a firm grip on Dog’s collar, as the dog seemed to believe that the bath had been drawn up solely for him to play in*. Newt held a spell book open for Anathema, who was getting her herbs and amulets ready. Crowley kept his gloved hand on Aziraphale’s shoulder. The angel’s face was submerged beneath the surface of the holy water, like a drowning victim, and it took all of Crowley’s restraint not to pull him out. But Crowley could see that the burns on Aziraphale’s body were gradually fading.

“It’s working,” Crowley said.

“The holy water is healing the hellfire burns on his incorporation,” Anathema said. “Now we just need to do a healing spell, using God’s power in the form of the relic, to restore his wings.”

“Well, get on with it then.”

“I am,” Anathema said. She looked nervous, which is never an inspiring quality in a professional about to perform a delicate operation.** But she started intoning some Latin from the spell book, sprinkled some herbs into the bathwater, and waved an amulet over Aziraphale’s head. At what seemed to be the critical moment, she took the small reliquary Newt handed her. She hesitated for a moment, apparently not having thought through the mechanics of exactly how God’s power was to be wielded. Finally, she settled on smashing open the glass cover of the reliquary against the edge of the bathtub. She took out the small bone fragment inside, said another word in Enochian, then unceremoniously tossed the relic into the holy water.

The effect was something like that of dropping a running hair dryer into a filled bathtub. There was a bright white flash, and Crowley, who hadn’t let go of Aziraphale’s shoulder, felt a sizzling electricity-like charge. When the spots had cleared from his vision, Crowley could see, to his profound relief, Aziraphale’s wings had resprouted, bright white and full as ever, albeit rather soggy and bunched up in the bathtub.

“It worked,” Newt said, surprised.

“You are my favorite humans from now on,” Crowley said fervently, not taking his eyes off Aziraphale. “Anything you want, it’s yours.”

“Well,” Newt said, “we could start with a—”

“Shut up,” Crowley cut him off. “Why isn’t he waking up?”

Aziraphale’s wings were back, and the burns were nearly all healed into fresh pink skin. But his eyes were still closed, and Crowley could feel that something was still missing. Aziraphale’s essence was still on the ethereal plane.

“He’s finding his way back,” Adam said. “He might need your help.”

“Come on, angel,” Crowley said. He felt disconnected behind the plastic shield of the Hazmat suit, so he fumbled with the suit until he figured out how to push the hood back. Then he leaned his uncovered face towards Aziraphale, close enough that the fumes from the holy water made his eyes tear up. Or something was making his eyes tear up, anyway. “You said you’d come back,” Crowley said. “You said if you had a choice, you’d choose to stay here with me. So come back now, or—” he fell back on Aziraphale’s usual threat to him – “or I’ll never speak to you again.”

Aziraphale’s eyes flew open, and his hands suddenly came up and pushed Crowley away, hard. Not expecting the shove, Crowley fell back onto his rear end in a very undignified way. Aziraphale sat bolt upright in the tub, holy water plastering his hair*** across his forehead.

“Hey,” Crowley said. “What was that for?”

Aziraphale turned to him with wide eyes. “Bathtub of holy water.” He was gasping in great gulps of air, as if he had just remembered the pleasures of breathing oxygen and couldn’t get enough of it. “You were too close.”

“Well, whose fault is that? If you had come back on schedule, I wouldn’t have needed to get that close.”

“I was coming. I knew the way, you already showed it to me.”

“Well,” Crowley said, standing up. “You are back now? You’re all right?”

“I’m fine, my dear.” Aziraphale paused, getting his breathing under control, then said, “And Anathema, Newt, Adam – thank you all so much. Your kindness and courage gives me faith in humanity.”

“It was nothing, really,” Newt said with obviously false modesty.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said, with sudden inspiration. “There’s something I forgot to do.”

“What’s that, my dear?”

Crowley grinned and waved a hand. Aziraphale, looking confused, reached down into the tub and pulled out a rubber duck. When he saw what it was, he started laughing, and Crowley joined in. They kept laughing, venting their relief, as the humans stared at them like they were nutters. As far as points in the spacetime continuum went, this one was all right. 

* * *

*Dog was one of those dogs who believe that any novel feature of the environment was put there solely for them to play with.

**Like a surgeon who asks if you mind if they pray before they begin, or a contractor who stares at your storm-damaged house and says they’re not sure how it’s still standing with that much damage to the load-bearing walls.

***A nice side benefit to bathing in holy water is that it conditions hair and leaves skin looking younger. However, its use is not recommended if you are a demon or have an oily skin type.


	21. Chapter 21

Aziraphale stood with his wings stretched out like a cormorant. He was letting them air-dry, at Crowley’s insistence. Crowley took his wing-care regiment seriously, and he had boggled when Aziraphale said he would just use a towel or maybe a hair dryer to get the last drops of holy water out of his wings. Crowley had insisted that those methods would lead to ruffled and crooked feathers, Aziraphale had insisted that he didn’t mind, and Crowley had insisted that _he_ did. Just why Crowley cared so much about the condition of his wings, Aziraphale didn’t know, but he suspected that it had something to do with Crowley still being upset about having witnessed his wings, and indeed the rest of him, burn up like charcoal. Even now, as Aziraphale stood to one side of the bookshop back room, his wings filling most of the available space, holy water dripping onto the towels he had placed on the floor, he noticed Crowley stealing glances at him from the sofa on the other side of the room, to which Aziraphale had confined him until all the holy water was safely disposed of. Crowley kept looking over at him as if to confirm that he was still there, that his wings were still intact and his skin free of hellfire burns, but whenever Aziraphale met his eye, Crowley pretended to look elsewhere.

Aziraphale had wanted to use a more aggressive wing-drying method because he wanted every last drop of holy water out of the bookshop as soon as possible. To him, the holy water felt like a bomb waiting to go off. After getting out of his holy-water bath with his body newly healed, he had retrieved the rubber duck and the relic* from it and then immediately sent the entire tub and its contents Away.** Crowley had manifested some towels and tossed them to him from a safe distance. That was when Aziraphale had noticed with bemusement the Hawaiian-print swim trunks Crowley had dressed him in, and Crowley had shrugged apologetically and miracled him back into his normal tweed suit and camelhair overcoat. Aziraphale could feel that the clothing was not quite the same as it had been***, but he appreciated the effort nonetheless. Then they had had their brief but intense argument over proper wing-drying technique, and Aziraphale had agreed to air-drying on the condition that Crowley keep his Hazmat suit on, no matter how ridiculous it looked, and that he stay on the other side of the room until all the holy water was gone. So now Aziraphale’s wings were slowly drying, Adam was unsuccessfully trying to persuade Dog to play fetch with the rubber duck that had been rescued from the bath, Anathema was perusing the room’s assortment of rare books, Newt was on the phone with his mother checking in on how much trouble the kids were causing, and Crowley was sitting on the sofa watching Aziraphale while trying to look like he wasn’t.

Aziraphale saw Adam yawn, and his politeness instinct went into full overdrive as he wondered where on earth his manners were. “It’s getting rather late,” Aziraphale said to the room at large. “I hope you’ll stay the night?”

“They have to,” Crowley said, sounding bored. “At least Adam does. Otherwise, we’re dead, remember?”

“They don’t _have_ to,” Aziraphale said, shooting Crowley a long-practiced glare that had about a fifty-fifty success rate in getting him to behave himself, “but they are of course _welcome_ to.”

“Newt already told his mother that we’re staying overnight,” Anathema said absently, not looking up from her copy of _Malleus Maleficarum_. “Something about a romantic weekend getaway, isn’t that a laugh?”

“I can stay too,” Adam said. “I told my parents I’m staying at Brian’s tonight. They probably know I’m lying, but they’re used to it.”

“Well, you all must be hungry,” Aziraphale said. “Let’s order some takeaway.”

After Newt got off the phone, he and Anathema ventured out to pick up some curries from the shop down the street. When they came back with the food, Aziraphale jerked his head at them meaningfully until Crowley rolled his eyes and gave them a couple of twenty-pound notes as reimbursement for the food and petrol. They all sat around devouring their curries, except Aziraphale, who ate standing up on his side of the room to avoid dripping holy water all over the place.

“Any ideas as to what, er, comes next?” Aziraphale asked as they ate. Everyone seemed so calm, he decided that he would have to be the one to worry about what to do about Heaven and Hell.

“Tadfield, I suppose,” Crowley said with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. “We can caravan over there tomorrow. These two –” he indicated Newt and Anathema – “can drive Dirk Turple” – Newt broke in to correct him on the car’s correct name, but Crowley ignored him – “while you and I take Adam in the Bentley. Having him with us should keep them from waylaying us on the road.”

“Can I drive?” Adam asked eagerly.

“What do you _think_ the answer to that question is?” Crowley asked witheringly.

“Yes?” Adam suggested. But even at the height of his Antichrist powers, he would not have been able to alter reality to the extent that Crowley would have answered yes. Reality had to draw a line somewhere.

There was an awkward silence as Newt and Anathema appeared to hold a silent debate, mostly using their eyebrows. Anathema was suggesting that they do the right thing, Newt was acknowledging that it was the right thing but asking if they could maybe do something else instead, Anathema was holding firm, and Newt was giving in. Aziraphale recognized the general form, if not the specific content, of the argument based on the thousands of similar debates he had had with Crowley.

“You’re welcome to stay with us at the cottage,” Newt finally said. “As long as you like.”

“Thank you, that’s very generous of you to offer,” Aziraphale said. “We will, of course, help with the household duties. And we won’t inconvenience you for too long. Right, Crowley?” He was aware that hiding out in Tadfield’s protective shield was essentially their only option in the short term, but he was hoping that Crowley had given some thought to the matter of how to resolve their situation in the long term. Aziraphale himself didn’t have the foggiest idea.

“Right,” Crowley said. “We’ll think of some way out of this. And, hey, being stuck in that tedious cottage in that tedious village will be great motivation to think faster.”

With that, Aziraphale hinted that Crowley should manifest some beds for their guests, which Crowley did. He set up one bed for Newt and Anathema out in the main part of the shop behind the counter, to give them some privacy, and one for Adam in a supply cupboard, which Adam found delightful. At Aziraphale’s urging, Crowley also miracled up some toothpaste and toothbrushes and soap and hair gel and aftershave and lint rollers for the humans. Neither Crowley nor Aziraphale were quite sure what supplies humans needed for their bedtime rituals, but they thought it must be things like those whose purpose would otherwise be inexplicable. Newt and Anathema thanked them politely and went to bed, Adam grabbed Dog and shut himself inside his cupboard fortress, and Aziraphale and Crowley were finally alone in the back room.

Aziraphale gingerly felt his wings. They were dry now, had been for some time, but he had wanted to make absolutely sure. He folded them away, then banished the holy-water-soaked towels on the floor to some unknown faraway destination. Now that he was no longer dripping with demon-killing liquid, Aziraphale made his way over the sofa and sat down next to Crowley.

“I can take this off, then?” Crowley asked, gesturing to his Hazmat suit.

“Yes, my dear. All dry now.”

Crowley waved the Hazmat suit out of existence and a wine bottle and two glasses into it. “Well, that was a day,” he said, pouring Aziraphale a glass.

“Yes, indeed.” It seemed like years had passed since Crowley had left to water his plants that afternoon. In a way, it had been, because the passage of time in the ethereal realm had felt remarkably real. Aziraphale felt as though he had relived his entire life in the span of a single day. He wondered if it felt that way to Crowley too. Of course, Crowley had known all along that it was all an illusion, which Aziraphale hadn’t known until the very end. Aziraphale felt a twinge of guilt that Crowley had been along for the ride through the whirlwind tour of Aziraphale’s deep-seated insecurities. That couldn’t have been enjoyable, as many of Aziraphale’s worst moments hadn’t been a fun time for Crowley either. But Crowley hadn’t complained. Well, he had, but only in that pro forma way that was expected of him. He hadn’t flinched away from Aziraphale’s inner turmoil even for a moment. Looking back at the past six thousand years, Aziraphale saw more clearly than ever how completely empty and depressing they would have been, how unable he would have been to make it through, without Crowley’s steady, enjoyable, sometimes mildly infuriating companionship.

“I suppose I can get properly angry at you now,” Crowley said, although he seemed disinclined to do so.

“For what?”

“That whole Agnes Nutter self-immolation thing.”

“Oh.” It seemed so long ago, Aziraphale had nearly forgotten that he had done that. “Well, it worked.”

Crowley glared at him. Apparently, he hadn’t forgotten that Aziraphale had done that, because he looked properly angry now. “If by worked, you mean it nearly burned you to a cinder, sure, it worked.”

“I was going to be burned to a cinder anyway,” Aziraphale pointed out reasonably. “At least this way I took the archangels out with me, and I gave you a fighting chance to get us both out of it. Which you did. Nicely done.”

Crowley’s glare was unabated. “How long had you been planning that?”

Aziraphale shrugged. “It was always Plan B. Just in case I was captured by Heaven and they weren’t willing to listen to reason. I had hoped I wouldn’t ever have to do it.”

“You never told me.”

“Well, I didn’t think you’d think it was a good idea.”

“It wasn’t.” Crowley threw back the wine like a shot and refilled his glass.

“I knew you’d save me.” Aziraphale had known that, somehow. He had known that, no matter how impossible it had seemed at the time for him to do anything about it, Crowley wouldn’t just stand there and watch him be burned up by hellfire.

“There’s no way you could have known that.”

“But I did. I told you, Crowley, I have faith in you.”

“Well, stop it. I’m not –” Crowley stopped and shook his head.

“You’re not what?”

“Not worth your faith, or whatever. I’m just a demon. Not even much of one.”

“You’re miraculous.”

“ _You’re_ mad.”

“The Almighty said it Herself. Demons aren’t even supposed to be able to love.”

“You made me. Didn’t give me much of a bloody choice about it, did you? I mean, how could I not—” Apparently realizing what he had just said, Crowley scowled into his wine glass, face flushed red with embarrassment.

Aziraphale took pity on him. “Well, I suppose you’ll want to get some sleep, I know how you enjoy it. I’m going to check on the books that were damaged in the fire, see if I can’t repair them before we leave tomorrow.” He started to get up from the sofa, but Crowley stopped him.

“Just – sit here and drink the damn wine with me, all right?”

“All right,” Aziraphale said, pouring himself a refill.

Crowley moved a bit closer on the sofa. Aziraphale, sensing that Crowley wanted the comfort of physical contact after the distance that had been imposed between them since holy-water bathtime, tentatively put his arm around Crowley’s shoulders. Immediately, Crowley leaned into him, as if he had been waiting for an invitation. They stayed that way, refilling the bottle of wine as needed. Aziraphale’s head was soon buzzing pleasantly, and he saw no need to sober up. He managed to grab Crowley’s wine glass from him just before he fell asleep. Then Aziraphale decided he would sleep too, since he was drunk and there was no way he could move without waking Crowley anyway. At some point, he flopped over sideways onto the sofa, with Crowley nestled up against him. As he drifted off to sleep, Aziraphale remembered the feeling he had while lying on that mattress on the floor with every nerve ending in his body inflamed, his wings a wreckage, in the worst pain and fear that he had ever felt. Then Crowley’s wing had encircled him in the warmest and softest touch imaginable, more soothing than holy water, and the pain and fear had eased. It was a sensation he would always carry with him.

* * *

*Anathema had poked and prodded at the relic, determining it to be out of juice, a technical term of the dark arts. But she kept it just in case.

**The tub had materialized in a field in Scotland, where it had become a de facto watering hole for a flock of sheep and quickly metamorphosed into a holy manure lagoon.

***Crowley had been unable to resist making Aziraphale’s clothing just a tad more stylish, by tailoring a more flattering cut for the suit and adding some nice pearl buttons to the coat.


	22. Chapter 22

Adam woke up to Dog licking his face. That was not different from any other morning, but what was different was how completely dark it was. It was dark because he was in a windowless supply cupboard, an exciting and adventurous place to spend the night, even if said supply cupboard was in a bookshop, a dull and dreary place to spend the night. Somehow, camping out in tight enclosed spaces was always exciting and adventurous. When he was younger, he had spent many nights sleeping in elaborate blanket forts he had constructed in his bedroom, and once he and the rest of the Them had even stayed out all night in their lean-to in the quarry. They had started off pretending to be jungle explorers in Africa, then had morphed into space explorers on an alien planet, and by the end of the night, they weren’t sure what exactly it was they were pretending to explore, only that they were explorers.

Now that he was almost a grown-up, Adam was supposed to be too old for exploration and excitement and adventure. But he had never cared about what he was supposed to be.

Adam yawned, opened the cupboard door, and fell out into the main part of the bookshop. Newt and Anathema were already up and out of bed, which was good. Adam did not want to see two grown-ups in bed together, especially not grown-ups that he had known since he was a child and therefore considered something like a wacky aunt and uncle.

“Good morning, Adam,” Anathema said brightly. “Did you sleep well?’”

Adam shrugged. “Well enough. But I had funny dreams.”

“Funny how?”

“Oh, I could hear all the angels patrolling this place. They were saying they should nuke it from orbit.”

“What?” Newt asked in alarm.

“Don’t worry, it was just talk. Just the rank-and-file angels on patrol, wondering why they were sent here and whether they’ll get hazard pay. They won’t nuke it, that would take out half of England, which is something they’re not opposed to in general but don’t have plans for at this time, and anyway they’d have to get humans to do it because we have all the nukes.”

“All right, then,” Newt said, blinking blearily. “I need tea.”

Newt stumbled toward the back room in search of tea or the equipment and supplies required for its preparation, and Anathema and Adam followed behind. When he entered the back room, Newt stopped suddenly, saying “Oh, sorry,” in an embarrassed tone.

Aziraphale and Crowley were lying together on the sofa that was really too small for the both of them, in defiance of Adam’s desire not to see grown-ups in bed together, especially not grown-ups that he had known since he was a child and therefore considered something like wacky uncles.

“Sorry for what?” Crowley asked as he sat up and stretched.

“I really have no idea,” Newt mumbled.

Aziraphale sat up too, wincing a bit. “Oops, hangover. I didn’t bother to sober up last night,” he said, shaking his head like he was trying to get water out of his ear.

Crowley did the same head-shaking motion. “Yeah, me neither. There, that’s better. Need help with yours?”

“Thanks, my dear, I’ve got it.” The slightly pained expression on Aziraphale’s face eased, and he got up and clapped his hands together. “Right, who wants tea?”

Aziraphale made tea for everyone, and Newt ducked out to buy croissants from the bakery around the corner. Adam drowned his croissant in about twenty packets of raspberry jam and took a big bite, making jam spurt out like blood in a satisfying sort of way. “What?” Adam said through his mouthful, noticing that the others were all staring at him. “S’good.”

“Well, I suppose we’d better be off,” Aziraphale said, surveying his bookshop wistfully as if he might never see it again. Then a look of horror came over his face. “Crowley, your plants! What will happen to them while we’re gone?”

“They’ll probably reclaim London on behalf of all vegetation anywhere,” Crowley said. “They’re tough. I’ve trained them well.”

“Well, maybe we won’t be gone that long anyway,” Aziraphale said hopefully.

“Right,” Crowley said, sounding unconvinced. “Well, let’s hit the road.”

“Don’t you need to pack or –” Newt started to ask, then remembered who he was talking to. “I suppose not. All right, let’s go.”

They made it outside just in the nick of time, because Dick Turpin was about to be towed away by parking enforcement. “Hey, that’s my car, you heartless mercenaries,” Newt shouted, running over to the tow truck and positioning himself in front of it somewhat hesitantly, as if doubting how far he was willing to go for his own cause.

The tow-truck driver leaned out of the window of the cab. “This is your car?” he asked, pointing his thumb back to Dick Turpin. The car was hooked like a shopping trolley that had been dumped in a stream and subsequently ensnared by a fishing line.

“Yes, I just said it was my car—”

“And you want it back?” the man said incredulously.

“Look, it’s a very good car. It’s fuel-efficient, has innovative safety features, it’s as reliable as, well, something pretty reliable –”

Anathema stood behind Newt, mouthing _Please take it_ to the tow-truck driver.

“All right, enough of this,” Crowley said impatiently. He waved a hand, causing the tow-truck driver to get a call about an all-hands-on-deck parking enforcement emergency over on the other side of Soho. Dick Turpin was released, and a Tadfield expedition team meeting was held on the sidewalk. It was decided that Newt and Anathema would lead the way in Dick Turpin and that the others would follow in the Bentley, on the grounds that they had to stop at Newt’s mother’s house to pick up the children and Crowley didn’t know the way, and on the additional grounds that, as Aziraphale said delicately, Newt might have some difficulty keeping up with Crowley if the Bentley went first. Crowley registered his disapproval of Dog riding in the Bentley, but Adam refused to be separated from his dog, and Crowley gave the matter a lot of thought and eventually decided that the risk of dog hairs and odors in the Bentley was marginally less serious than the risk of being annihilated by Above or Below.

Adam and Dog got into the backseat of the Bentley while, in the front row, Crowley grumbled about the insults and injuries the Bentley was being subjected to and Aziraphale made well-practiced sympathetic noises. The Bentley was pretty cool, in the way that really old things sometimes are. There was a sweet spot, Adam determined, about how old something had to be to be cool. New things were cool, of course, like the Jaguar that his Aunt Sally’s boyfriend, a dentist, had just bought. But things that were not really old or really new, like Dick Turpin, were decidedly uncool. Once things got really old, though, so old that they would have seemed old to your parents when they were kids, those things were cool too. By those criteria, Adam judged the Bentley to be well within the bounds of cool.

“So I can drive once we get out of the city, right?” he asked, bending his will toward making Crowley believe that that was the consensus they had reached.

“My car is already being humiliated enough getting led around by that cautionary tale of automotive mis-engineering,” Crowley said, glaring at the rear bumper of Dick Turpin as if trying to restrain himself from making it burst into flame. “Not to mention your dog slobbering all over the backseat. So believe me, kid, you really don’t want to try my patience right now.”

Adam sighed. Sometimes he missed being able to get whatever he wanted, even if that power had almost destroyed the world.

They stopped at Newt’s mother’s house on the outskirts of London, waiting in the Bentley while Newt and Anathema went in to retrieve the children. “They’ve multiplied,” Crowley said. He stared as Sage was led out by Newt, who was trying in vain to prevent her from splashing in every mud-filled puddle between the house and car, while Anathema carried the baby.

“Yes, that’s the baby,” Aziraphale said. “Remember Anathema was pregnant when we stayed with them last year?”

“I can’t be bothered to follow every detail of what the humans get up to.” Crowley impatiently drummed his fingers on the steering wheel while Newt and Anathema fiddled with the car seats. “Although,” Crowley said, waggling his eyebrows, “they do seem to be getting up to quite a bit. Wouldn’t have thought Pulsifer had it in him.”

“It’s the miracle of human life,” Aziraphale said with mild disapproval. “No need to be so crude about it.”

“Eh, they’re just as crude when they talk about us and what they think we get up to.”

They were soon back on the road. As they returned to the motorway, Crowley flipped on the radio. It was tuned to an Eighties station. “ _When you call my name, it’s like a little prayer_ ,” Madonna sang. Crowley grumbled and moved his hand to the dial to change the station. “ _CROOOWLEY_ ,” Madonna’s voice suddenly crooned.

Crowley yelped as if the dial had burned him and turned the radio off. But it immediately turned itself back on. “ _THERE’ZZZ NO UZZZE IN TRYING TO HIDE, CROWLEY_ ,” Madonna’s voice said, now with a distinct buzzing in it. “ _WE KNOW YOU’RE THERE, WITH THAT ANGEL OF YOURZZZ AND THE ANTICHRIZZZT._ ”

Next to Adam in the backseat of the Bentley, Dog’s hackles rose. No one would have ever suspected that Dog had hackles, but there they were, rising. Dog let out a low growl that started deep in his throat and sounded as though it would end with his teeth deep in someone else’s. Despite his appearance and usual demeanor, Dog still had the heart of a hellhound, just as even the floppiest Yorkshire terrier still has the heart of a wolf*, and something about the fly-wing whine of Beelzebub speaking with Madonna’s voice was bringing out that hellhound heart.

“And his dog, too,” Crowley said, going for bravado. “So don’t even think about coming after us again. That didn’t work out so well for the last idiots you sent.” Despite the bravado in his words, the Bentley was now distractedly weaving from side to side across its lane with decidedly less bravado.

“ _YOU WILL NOT BE ZZZAFE IN TADFIELD. YOU WILL NOT BE ZZZAFE ANYWHERE. PLEAZZZE ZZZTAND BY FOR ZZZOME MORE THREATZZZ.”_ There was a slight scuffling sound, as if Beelzebub was handing a microphone off to someone.

“ _HELLO_?” A different voice came through the radio. This voice sounded smug and superior, but also like Jon Bon Jovi, apparently the most convenient spare voice lying around that on particular radio frequency. “ _IS THIS THING ON?”_

“Gabriel?” Aziraphale asked, shocked.

“ _YES, IT’S ME, YOU TRAITOROUS DEMON-LOVING SCUM,”_ Gabriel said in Jon Bon Jovi’s voice. “ _SURPRISED TO HEAR ME ON THE INFERNAL AIRWAVES?_ ”

“Well, yes. Not really Heaven’s preferred communication method, is it? Bit modern.” Aziraphale said _modern_ in the way other people said _diseased_.

“ _AS IT HAPPENS, WE’RE IN THE MIDST OF A MAJOR MODERNIZATION EFFORT. TIMES ARE CHANGING, YOU KNOW. ADAPT OR DIE.”_

“Here’s an idea,” Crowley interjected. “How about you die?”

“ _DON’T INTERRUPT, DEMON, IT’S RUDE. WE’RE THE ONES MAKING THE THREATS HERE.”_

“Apparently threats are all you’re good for,” Aziraphale said mildly. “You’ve tried to kill us three times now, and you’ve failed three times.”

Crowley shot Aziraphale a _Don’t goad them_ expression, and the angel made an exasperated series of hand gestures that clearly conveyed _You were just goading them yourself_ , and Crowley responded with an eyebrow raise that effectively communicated _I’m an expert goader, leave it to the professionals._

“ _THAT IS A BIT EMBARASSING,”_ Gabriel conceded over Aziraphale and Crowley’s silent argument. “ _HOWEVER, WE ARE CONFIDENT THAT NEXT TIME THERE WILL BE NO DEUS EX MACHINA** TO SAVE YOU.”_

“When are you going to admit that, whatever the Almighty’s ineffable plan is, it clearly includes us?” Aziraphale asked.

“ _THAT’S JUST WHAT WE CONTACTED YOU TO DISCUSS. HAVE YOU NOT WONDERED WHY I’M HERE WITH MY COUNTERPART FROM DOWN BELOW?”_

“Well, you teamed up to destroy us,” Aziraphale said uncertainly. “Just like before.”

“ _THAT IS INDEED HOW OUR COLLABORATION STARTED, BUT WE HAVE SINCE MADE ANOTHER, SHALL WE SAY, ARRANGEMENT.”_ The last word was said with glee so malicious you hear the malicious smirk in the mouth that was saying it.

_“_ Just say whatever you have to say so we can get back to enjoying the greatest hits of the Eighties,” Crowley snarled. The tightness of his voice, and the way he was now following Dick Turpin so closely that they could see in the rearview mirror that Newt and Anathema were looking back in concern about Crowley’s erratic driving, revealed how much he was expecting not to like whatever was coming next.

“ _OUR RESPECTIVE BOARDS*** MET LAST NIGHT, AND WE HAVE REACHED A MOMENTOUS DECISION. WE WANTED YOU TWO TO BE THE FIRST TO HEAR OF THE IMMINENT MERGER.”_

“Merger of what?” Crowley asked warily, as if he suspected that he already knew the answer.

“ _HEAVEN AND HELL, OF COURSE_.”

The Bentley made another crazed lurch across the lane. In Dick Turpin, Anathema turned around in her seat to look at them through the rear windscreen and spread out her arms questioningly to ask whether everything was all right, and Crowley waved an impatient hand at her to indicate that it wasn’t but that they might as well keep going anyway.

“You’re joking,” Aziraphale gasped.

“ _YOU KNOW WE DON’T APPROVE OF JOKES.”_

“But – but you hate Down Below. And they hate you. The whole point of all this is that there are opposite sides. That’s what Crowley and I got in trouble for, for working together.”

“ _THE PROBLEM WAS NOT SO MUCH WHO YOU WORKED WITH. IT WAS WHO YOU WORKED FOR.”_

“Humanity,” Crowley filled in. “They weren’t hacked off at us because we worked together, it was because we stood with humanity. They hate humanity more than they hate each other now.”

_“I KNEW YOU WOULD UNDERZZZTAND, CROWLEY,”_ Beelzebub interjected. “ _THE BOTTOM LINE IZZZ, MOVING FORWARD, WE HAVE TO BE AGILE AND THINK OUTZZZIDE THE BOX TO REMAIN COMPETITIVE IN TODAY’ZZZ MARKET. AT THE END OF THE DAY, WE’RE IN THE BUZZZINEZZZ OF HUMAN ZZZOULZZZ, AND THAT IS AN INDUZZZTRY THAT HAZZZ BEEN DIZZZRUPTED BY NEW TECHNOLOGY. BY POOLING OUR REZZZOURZZZES AND EXPERTIZZZE WITH THOSE OF OUR FORMER COMPETITORZZZ, WE CAN GAIN MARKET SHARE AND DOMINANZZZE. WE’RE ABOUT TO RAMP UP PRODUCTION LIKE THE WORLD HAZZZ NEVER ZZZEEN BEFORE.”_

“You can’t scare me with those business buzzwords, I invented half of them,” Crowley said, his hands tightly gripping the Bentley’s steering wheel. “What you’re saying is that you and Above are teaming up to facilitate industrial-scale processing of human souls, which means mass murder.”

“You can’t do that,” Aziraphale said, horrified. “Gabriel, where is all this written in the ineffable plan?”

“ _MAYBE SOMEWHERE YOU CAN’T READ IT,”_ Gabriel said snidely. “ _IN BIGGER LETTERS. UNDERLINED. TWICE.”_

Aziraphale and Crowley exchanged an uneasy glance.

“ _WE WOULD THANK YOU TWO, IF THAT WAS THE ZZZORT OF THING WE DID_ ,” Beelzebub added. “ _GOING OFF ZZZCRIPT WAS YOUR IDEA, AFTER ALL. AND IT WAZZZ OUR MUTUAL HATRED OF YOU THAT UNITED UZZZ IN THE FIRZZZT PLAZZZE.”_

_“AS A TOKEN OF OUR APPRECIATION, WE WILL NOT DESTROY YOU TWO,”_ Gabriel said, in the most threatening manner in which a token of appreciation can be extended. “ _YET. WE WANT YOU TO SEE THE BRAVE NEW WORLD YOU’VE MADE. ENJOY THE SHOW.”_

Suddenly the only sound coming from the radio was Bon Jovi singing, “ _We’ve gotta hold on to what we’ve got, it doesn’t make a difference if we make it or not…_ ” Crowley didn’t bother to turn it off, instead keeping his hands firmly on the steering wheel and his eyes on the road ahead.

“You were right,” Aziraphale said in a hollow voice. “It’s the really big one. All of Us against all of Them.” It was clear which Us he considered himself and Crowley to be part of.

“We are,” Crowley said slowly, rolling the words around in his mouth like wine at a tasting, “so completely, utterly, profoundly buggered.”

“So what else is new?” Adam asked in a bored tone.

Crowley and Aziraphale both jumped a bit, as if they had forgotten that Adam was there. They probably had.

“What’s _new_ ,” Crowley said, glaring so hard that Adam could feel it even though Crowley was wearing sunglasses and facing away from him, “is that they are now united against us. They are going to turn the considerable resources of Heaven and Hell into making the lives of all humans, and more importantly our lives” – he gestured between himself and Aziraphale – “as miserable as possible before condemning us all to screaming death. The Apocalypse was just the opening act for what’s coming now.”

“So?” Adam scratched the ear of Dog, who had forgotten that he had the heart of a hellhound and was now trying to stick his head out the window even though the window wasn’t open. “They’ve never been on our side. They’ve always been messing us around. Least now they’ll have to be open about it so we’ll have a chance to fight back. And you two, you’ve never been on their side, you’ve always been on ours. So really, what’s changed?” As he spoke, Adam could feel reality shimmering around him. It was like that sometimes now, no longer bending to his will, just sort of reflecting it back at him.

Crowley sighed. “You know, if you live long enough to have a career, I’d recommend cult leader. You’ve got that charisma. You’d have them drinking poisoned Kool-Aid in no time.”

“He’s right, Crowley,” Aziraphale said.

“That’s what I just said.”

“We’re right where we’ve always been,” Aziraphale went on, ignoring him. “We don’t need Heaven or Hell or God or the ineffable plan. We have everything we need. We have the good people of humanity—” he waved a hand to encompass the space between the Bentley’s backseat and Dick Turpin ahead – “and we have –”

“Don’t say it,” Crowley groaned.

Aziraphale didn’t have to say it, because on the radio, Bon Jovi was saying it for him. “ _We’ve got each other, and that’s a lot…_ ”

Crowley adjusted his sunglasses, even though they didn’t need adjusting, and stole another look at Aziraphale in the seat beside him. In the backseat, Adam sat perfectly balanced between the angel and the demon, human incarnate.

“All right, angel,” Crowley finally said. “We’ll give it a shot.”

The Bentley continued its way down the road.

* * *

*If you watch that floppy Yorkshire terrier closely enough, you will see it. Watch when a squirrel or the neighbor’s cat strays into the garden. Suddenly, the Yorkie will not remember how small it is or how cutely its ears droop or how perkily its tail wags or how yappily it barks. And if you watch closely enough, you will not remember either. All you will see is the light of a hunter moon, full-throated howls echoing across the plain, maw dripping with the blood of a wild beast, discarded bones chewed through to the marrow in the flicker of an early human campfire. And then the Yorkie will get distracted by a hosepipe and return to its floppily domesticated state.

** _Deus ex machina_ is a Latin term meaning “god from the convenient if admittedly rather contrived plot device.”

***Of course, like any corporation, Heaven and Hell have boards of directors. You’d probably recognize most of the names on Hell’s board, and probably none of the ones on Heaven’s. A common pastime among bored denizens of Heaven and Hell is to debate whether the board meetings are worse Upstairs or Downstairs. Heaven has better snacks, but their meetings tend to drag on insufferably. Hell makes it a point to get through the agenda quickly, because they’ve already been sentenced to everlasting torment, but there is such a thing as taking it too far.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! 
> 
> Edit: there is now a sequel, making the series a trilogy.


End file.
